How would it make you feel if you were so bad at your job people thought you had to be screwing up on purpose? 

Kellie Pickler, for any pop-culturally-challenged readers, appeared this season in the role of the cute, blond, countrified hick on the Fox "reality" show, American Idol.  (See here for Pickler, and for past individuals appearing in this role see here, here and pretty much here.)

Pickler seemed like a nice girl and had one doozy of a back-story.  But she displayed such staggering stupidity that the show's viewers were left wondering how she even managed to cross her own street in the morning without getting run over or, at the very least, hopelessly lost.

Since she had, in fact, made it to the ripe old age of 19, her act simply wasn't credible and everyone pretty much agreed to decide that she had to be faking it.  People just couldn't believe anyone could be that stupid by accident.

The NBA has a Kellie Picker problem. 

The league's officiating has become so bad that many fans believe the only possible explanation is that the commissioner of a fantastically successful professional sports league is risking the sports scandal of the century by secretly directing referees to fix games to ensure better late-round match-ups or the continued visibility of rising stars like Lebron James.  

Fans from Sacramento may even have a point.

But the rest of us should understand that the NBA would never jeopardize the legitimacy of its championship by engaging in some risky conspiracy when it's so much easier to do it just by having terrible referees. 

To his credit, Commissioner David Stern has tackled the issue of poor officiating head on, by fining the bejeezus out of any player, coach or team official who dares to suggest there might be a problem.  Just this week, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban was fined $200,000 for criticizing officials on the court and in his blog.

Cuban demonstrated the depths of his irresponsibility by proposing a concrete plan to improve officiating during the playoffs by using fewer refs with more intensive scheduling, and offsetting the additional workload with higher pay.  Read it yourself - it really is crazy stuff.

Another prominent league official spouted off about the refs blowing about "five percent" of their calls every game.  He was promptly fined by the- oh wait, actually that was Stern himself. (Guess it's not an issue when it's the Man who does the deed.)

The truth is that the NBA has a problem that can't be solved by levying fines on frustrated billionaires.  If the league is going to get serious about fixing that problem, it needs to start by taking two steps before next season. 

The first step is ending the practice of referees swallowing their whistles in the waning seconds of a game.  Players know that officials are loath to step in and make a call in that situation, so they swipe, scratch and claw on defense, or take however many steps they need to reach the basket on offense.  It's gotten so bad that when officials actually do call a foul in that situation they are blasted for not "letting the players decide the game."

The league office should make it clear that enforcing the rules through the final buzzer will be a new point of emphasis.  Making correct calls in late-game situations will cause some anger in December before players get used to the change, but it will lead to better outcomes by April.

The second point of emphasis should be eliminating special treatment for "superstars."  For years the league has lived with a situation where the stars get calls that second-tier players can only dream about.  The net effect is that the league accepts - and if you believe some, actually encourages - inconsistency in its officiating.  And yet somehow Stern can't understand when fans complain about calls that seem to go one way at one point in the game, and another way later. 

It's time to level the playing field.  Make the superstars play it straight just like everybody else does.  They're good enough to adjust and the game will be better for it.  If the NBA truly has the best referees in the world, they should be able to adjust too. 

It's not like the NBA would be trying something totally untested here.  Other sports have had success addressing similar issues.  Major League Baseball invested in the Questec video system to end the practice of individual umpires having wildly different strike zones.  Although it faced vocal opposition from both umpires and pitchers, the system worked.  Strike zones throughout the league are now more or less standardized and pitchers with great reputations no longer get to make their living on an "outside corner" that extends six inches beyond the edge of home plate.

In football, the NFL cleaned up shenanigans in the secondary by making downfield contact a point of emphasis for its officials.  A lot of good corners got burned in the process, and a few back judges might have torn their rotator cuffs, but the players adjusted and the game now more closely resembles the rulebook. 

We've even seen it work in the NBA.  Last season the league emphasized enforcement of rules prohibiting "hand-checking" by defenders on the perimeter.  The referees complied, the players adjusted, and the game regained some of its flow.  So why can't the league build on this success by taking on its truly big problems?

It would be a ballsy move for a commissioner who has maybe gotten a little bit comfortable with the way things are today.  But as Kellie Pickler herself would say ... "What's a ballsy?"

Sigh.