What I find more interesting is the creative ideas in this thread about limiting refs from calling two techs in a minute or without one of the other refs stepping in. There's no magic bullet - we all acknowledged that these are humans put on an enormous stage with millions of eyes watching - but I think putting the focus on the players and not adding additional measures to curb the influence of poor officiating is focusing on the wrong part of the equation. Obviously I'm biased because of Kemba getting tossed last night, but I just don't see too much harm in players getting upset, cursing, expressing themselves, etc. I'd rather focus on giving them less to get upset about in the first place.
I'm reminded of a different scene we sometimes observe with global football: something happens, play is stopped, and players from one team swarm up to a referee even before he's had the chance to make a call, pleading for something to be done. Maybe he's waiting to hear what his linesman saw, or marching towards a spot, or replaying it in his mind - whatever the reason, there's a pause, and the players swarm him. Then he makes the call that they're asking for (but just as clearly, not
because they swarmed him)... and then the players from the
other team run up instead and complain and whine, making a second scene and requiring yet more time to get everyone to calm down and go back to sporting their sport.
The players are not going to be satisfied no matter the quality of the refereeing, because their livelihoods as well as their competitive instincts depend on being convinced of their own abilities and rightness. They will
always perceive events and officials as biased against them (much as we do as fans), think something is unjust, and try to influence the officiating. Again:
no amount of refereeing quality will make players stop complaining. It will just mean the complainers are wrong a higher fraction of the time than they currently are. But right or wrong, they'll do it.
Any solution has to recognize that while "the players are the product", they are part of the problem here too, and if you're going to ask more out of officials who already have an impossible job to do, you also have to make asks of players.