A Little Consistency Please

I hate how during the NBA playoffs the rules unofficially change. A foul during the regular season or the first 45 minutes of the playoff game is suddenly just good hard defense during the last 3 minutes of a playoff game. The function for defining a foul shouldn’t be time dependent. A play should either be a foul or not.

Here is the NBA rule books definition of a foul:

“A player shall not hold, push, charge into, impede the progress of an opponent by
extending a hand, arm, leg or knee or by bending the body into a position that is not normal. Contact that results in the re-routing of an opponent is a foul which must be called immediately."

See, there is nothing in the definition that says to consult the game clock when determining a foul. Why should the rules suddenly change at the end of a game? Why have a rulebook and an official definition if the referee charged with upholding it are just going to ignore it for the last three minutes? It doesn’t make any sense.

Let’s say a team plays hard the whole game. They develop a strategy to penetrate and draw fouls. This strategy has been working well the whole game, then when the clock hits 2:59 they stop getting those calls. Instead of a trip to the free throw line and a chance at points, they just get a turnover and bruise for their efforts. It is ridiculous.

Now don’t get me wrong; I am not against referees letting the players play. If I had my way they would call a whole lot less fouls. Most of the time, the fouls are so ticky-tack they just slow the whole game down. I find myself losing interest in games that spend a lot of time on the charity stripe. I am not unrealistic though. I realize we cant play street rules. A professional sports league needs clear rules. I am a proponent of some happy median. But what I really want more than anything is consistency in how the games are called. Is that really too much to ask?