Violet Palmer sucks. There’s no other way to put it. And last night’s Blazers game only furthered her reputation as a bad referee.
Early in the second quarter, she helped the Jazz come from behind by making 6 straight calls against the Blazers. To call them “questionable calls” would be too kind. At one point, it looked like she was reading the Tim Donaghy “How to Fix Basketball Games” handbook (the same one that Pat Fraher, Jason Phillips and Bennett Salvatore have on their nightstand). No official should be able to exert this much influence over the flow of the game. She literally became Utah’s best defensive weapon. But she wasn’t done there.
After shutting down Portland’s offense during that stretch, she seemed to have a change of heart and refused to call fouls against the Blazers (to be fair, she did miss a call against Jazz forward Carlos Boozer when he practically spun Greg Oden around in the paint). I could only guess that she swallowed her whistle and doesn’t have a voice loud enough to call fouls without it.
So at this point, Palmer not only ruined the flow of the game with her 6 straight foul calls but she couldn’t even be consistent with which team was getting the calls. Unbelievable.
At this point I think it’s time for Palmer to go. She’s consistently bad and consistently inconsistent. The NBA really needs to a take a long look at her performance before the decide to bring her back for next year.
She can still make a living as a referee, but she’ll need to do it in a setting where the quality of the officiating doesn’t matter because it won’t affect the quality of basketball being played.
Like the WNBA.
{ 2 comments… read them below or add one }
I see a trend here. Violet has drunk the anti-blazer kool-aid.
shes a terrible referee im not sexist or anything but she needs to be fired. period