Out to separate fact from fiction: NBA hopes to dispel officiating myths
I hear every day, "if a referee misses two calls, did you fine him or do something to him." I say, "if a player is 0-for-6 in the first quarter, did you suspend him or did you fine him?" This is not to be punitive. It is for education and development, to help him be the best official he can be.
- Stu Jackson
On the relative scale of things to worry about, the quality of NBA officiating does not rank very high. Still, if you've been to an NBA game recently, or even if you've just watched on on TV, you've got to wonder what these guys are looking at.
Of course, the reality is that calling an NBA is not an easy undertaking. The action is virtually constant and happens at speeds almost too fast to comprehend, the players are huge and fabulously talented, and everything happens in a very compact space. Imagine a high-speed mugging in a phone booth, and you might be close. Refereeing an NBA is quite probably the toughest job in sports. So how come the quality of refereeing is so bad? It might have a lot to do with some of the more prevalent myths.
NEW YORK -- Jeff Van Gundy is wrong.
But he is in good company. The NBA director of officiating and the league's vice president for basketball operations believe Phil Jackson is wrong, too. So is Rick Adelman. And especially Mark Cuban.
There are myths about officiating that Ronnie Nunn and Stu Jackson want to end. Getting rid of myths was a motivating factor for Friday's NBA media seminar on the extensive daily review process of referees.
Van Gundy's myth -- and he might prefer that Yao Ming still believe it -- is that "men of size" must accept that they will receive more contact than other players.
"That's a myth, and I want to remove that myth," said Nunn, who was an NBA official 19 years before becoming director of officials this season to help lead the increasingly intense and involved training process. "They deserve at 7-6 what people deserve at 5-6. Sometimes, there's a natural tendency to put certain contact into an incidental area where maybe it wasn't.
Actually, the level of quality control and training that is available to NBA referees is impressive. They are perhaps the most scrutinized, micro-managed, and least appreciated group in all of professional sports, and yet they remain some of the most professional. To be an NBA referee, you would REALLY have to love the game to be willing to put up with the micromanaging and second-guessing from league management, hectoring from fans, and petulant whining from players.
And yet how many of us would trade places with these guys (and ladies) in a heartbeat?
