From the mailbag, regarding officiating:

It seems to me that one of the problems is that fans do NOT understand the rules. I have a much better feeling about how the game is officiated now that my understanding has increased a bit.

Yeah, that's probably part of the problem. I might add that even fans who do know the rules probably haven't ever actually tried officiating to get a feel of how damn hard it is.

If you've never done so, it's worth reading the WNBA or NCAA rulebooks (available here and here in PDF).

And let me again commend the refs' board as a good source of knowledge. Here, for example, refs expose some common myths about the rules.

Note that when refs on the board cite certain rules, they are usually referring to high school (aka NFHS or "Fed") rules, which are different in some particulars from college rules, which are different in some particulars from WNBA rules.