NBA referee Ben Taylor ‘has been demoted in the last five games’ after Raptors guard Fred VanVleet complained about his officiating and blasted him as ‘F***ING TERRIBLE’
After Fred VanVleet blasted the officiating of referee Ben Taylor as f***ing terrible’, he was fined $30,000 by the NBA.
But that apparently wasn’t the only outcome of his rant.
According to ‘Basketball Illuminati’ host Tom Haberstroh, Taylor has received fewer assignments as a crew chief since the incident – despite spending much of the season in that role.
‘In the last five games, Ben Taylor has only been the crew chief once,’ Haberstroh explained on Canada’s Sportsnet 590 The FAN.
‘He’s been the referee [number] two four times since that game, since that rant, which is a real abnormality with Ben Taylor. If you look at his previous 52 games this season, Ben Taylor was the crew chief in 41 of those games. Basically four out of five of those games, he was crew chief.’
NBA official Ben Taylor has apparently been demoted since Fred Van Vleet’s scathing criticism
VanVleet called out Taylor for being ‘f****** terrible’ in his postgame comments on March 9
‘Taylor hasn’t been a referee two in back-to-back games all season,’ he continued. ‘After the Fred VanVleet [incident], it’s happened twice.
‘I don’t know if that’s intentional or whether that’s luck-of-the-draw, but certainly, the NBA has taken a different path when it comes to Ben Taylor’s assignments, whether that’s punishment or whether that’s just [them saying] ‘you need to chill out a little.”
VanVleet criticized Taylor after the Raptors’ loss to the Clippers on March 9, where the guard was given a technical foul – his eighth of the season – in the third quarter.
The 29-year-old said the reason he picked up the technical was because he was imploring his team to play through what he thought were some questionable calls, albeit with more colorful language.
VanVleet hit out at that call as well as the disparity in free throws between the teams.
‘I don’t mind it. I’ll take the fine. I don’t really care,’ VanVleet said after the game.
‘I thought Ben Taylor was f****** terrible tonight. I think that most nights, you know out of the three, there’s one or two that just f*** the game up. It’s been like that a couple of games in a row. Denver was tough, obviously.’
‘You come out tonight, competing pretty hard and I get a bulls*** tech that changes the whole dynamic of the game, changed the whole flow of the game.’
Of VanVleet’s eight technicals this year, three have been assessed by Taylor with one other coming from another official on a game Taylor was working. Taylor is in his 10th season as an NBA official.
‘At a certain point as a player, you feel it´s personal and it´s never a good place to be,’ VanVleet said. ‘That´s not why we lost tonight, we got outplayed, but it definitely makes it tougher to overcome.’
VanVleet was called for his eighth technical of the season with 7:02 left in the third quarter
‘Most of the refs are trying hard, I like a lot of the refs, they´re trying hard, they´re pretty fair, and communicate well.
‘And then you got the other ones who just want to be d***s and it just kind of f***s the game up. And no one´s coming to see that. They come to see the players.
‘And I think we´re losing a little bit of the fabric of what the NBA is and was, and it´s been disappointing this season.’
VanVleet is averaging 19.6 points per game with the Raptors currently ninth in the East.
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