Refereeing: A take on the Bucher piece

[Lascar78]

Dwight Jaynes of the Portland Tribune offered his take on Ric Bucher's piece on refereeing. Granted, I honestly don't know who this guy is, but I find myself in agreement I pretty much agree with everything he (and Al Davis) says.

Referees will have to accept new era

On Sports

By dwight jaynes

On the whole, I feel sorry for NBA referees. A good many of them have never struck me as people happy with their lot in life, and now that one of their own, Tim Donaghy, apparently has been caught fiddling with point spreads, things have gotten even worse for them.

The Aug. 13 edition of ESPN the Magazine features a story by Ric Bucher that gives some insight into how referees are feeling, and it’s not a pretty picture.

Apparently the officials believe they no longer are being backed by the league and are chafing under the constant evaluation — and ensuing criticism — that they are undergoing.

There also is the unattributed notion that since the league’s supervisor of officials, Ronnie Nunn, wasn’t considered a great ref during his 19 years packing a whistle, he’s in no position to tell them how to do their job.

The league, you see, is asking for uniformity in referee calls — and the refs think that’s taking away their personality and ability to use their own fine judgment.

While I sympathize with men attempting to perform one of the world’s toughest jobs, I find it extremely difficult to agree with them.

And I’ve never understood the notion that to evaluate one’s performance, you have to have been better at that task than the one you’re evaluating.

In other words, who is Roger Ebert to be telling Robert Redford how to act? Or why should the Detroit Tigers listen to their manager, Jim Leyland — he never played a game in the big leagues, so what does he know?

Obviously, these sorts of ideas — along with the concept that because someone was really good at doing something, it means he or she could teach it to someone else — are ridiculous.

What I perceive with the referees is a culture change that may not be repaired until many of the current refs retire. A lot of the veteran referees spent many years in the league as basketball’s version of the Lone Ranger. They roamed the country meting out their own forms of justice, largely as they pleased. There was little evaluation, and many of them thought of themselves as larger than the law.

And now that someone is trying to tell them how to do their job, they’re very uncomfortable.

But I’m afraid they’re going to have to get used to it or move on. Standardization of calls and uniformity is exactly what is needed. If nothing else, it’s a way of trying to eliminate bias — which, as I’ve written before, is the league’s biggest threat to fair officiating.

Oakland Raiders’ Managing Partner Al Davis, a bit of a rogue himself, was asked about the NBA’s referee scandal during a news conference recently and his answer was “I don’t worry about gambling, I worry about bias.”

A referee trying to manipulate a point spread late in a game to cover a bet he’s made somewhere? I don’t think there’s any reason to worry about it. I don’t think it’s going to happen very often.

But officials making certain calls because of a grudge against a player or a team, yes — I’ve seen it.

Officials so apparently in awe of a certain player they’re reluctant to call a foul or violation on him? Seen it many times.

Referees with obvious feuds going on against certain players or teams? Darned right. You’ve seen it, too, if you’ve watched the league for any time at all.

I don’t think the league, until recently, realized how much this affected its fan base. This sort of game-to-game bias, as much as any other thing, has turned millions of fans away from the league. I hear it constantly from disenchanted NBA fans.

And that’s too bad. NBA referees are tons better than college referees. But over the years, the league let them enforce the rules in a haphazard manner — often based on such precepts as rookie or veteran player, superstar or scrub, great team or cellar dweller — and it has obscured how well most of them can call a game.

Their personalities sometimes cloud their judgment. And that leaves the league no choice but to eliminate their personalities.

dwightjaynes@portlandtribune.com

[sturt]

...officiating in the NBA... Mathis comment here is a fairly significant independent corroboration of the point that something dramatic happened relatively overnight at the end of the Magic/Bird era and the beginning of the Bad Boys era with regard to how it has been officiated.

(Incidentally, I heard him on a talk radio show several evenings ago, and wish I had the transcript of that... he brings a first-hand, seemingly-candid perspective.)

'Now they have to deal with the fallout'

By JIM LITKE, AP Sports Columnist

August 4, 2007

Nobody will look at an NBA game the same way for some time.

That's as true for casual fans as it is for the federal investigators even now poring over videotape of every game of ex-referee Tim Donaghy, accused of betting on games over the last two seasons.

The question of whether Donaghy manipulated games is best left to the U.S. Attorney's office in Brooklyn. How he might have done it is a different matter.

"There's three groups that gamblers can work with to get what they want -- players, coaches and officials," said Mike Mathis, who refereed for 26 years in the NBA before retiring in 2001. "And the one that needs the least amount of help by far, is the official.

"Common sense tells you those guys in Vegas are awfully good at setting the point spread, so in most games, at the end, they're right in the hunt. One traveling call, or a foul and two free throws at a critical point and you're pretty darned close to right where you need to be."

The foul call that inspires the loudest howls of protests late in any game comes when a player drives to the basket and draws contact, requiring the ref to decide whether to whistle charging or blocking. The NBA has tried to narrow the interpretation of the rule by carving out a portion of the lane for defenders. It's been part of a larger effort by the league to quell on-court dissent by players and coaches, and quiet complaints by fans about incompetent officiating, let alone conspiracy theorists.

But the evidence suggests that taking away some of the refs' discretionary powers and making the review process less transparent has had just the opposite effect. Many observers would argue -- and ESPN.com's Bill Simmons has been downright prescient on the issue for two seasons now -- the quality of the NBA's officiating crews is at an all-time low.

And as anybody who watched Dwyane Wade shoot 25 free throws in Game 5 of the 2006 finals -- as many as the entire Dallas Mavericks team -- will recall, the charging-blocking continuum remains as confusing as ever. Besides, there are easier and less detectable ways to manipulate games.

Trying to help one team win, or even adjusting the margin of victory -- the point spread -- are way too risky; either tactic likely would have produced patterns that the league's supervisory officiating crews or the Vegas bookmakers who set the point spreads would have been quick to spot. Much tougher to catch would be a ref focused on manipulating the over-under line.

An over-under bet, one of several "proposition" bets available at sports books, requires picking whether the two teams playing will score more or less than the combined number of points predicted. Find a game where the over-under bet is around 190 points and an astute ref has a number of tools available to influence the outcome either way.

Say Kobe Bryant or Kevin Garnett picks up a quick foul early in a game -- legitimately. All a crooked ref has to do next is tack on a second soon after, then sit back.

Everybody in the building knows what's next," Mathis said. "The coach pulls the guy. And if a team that has a tough enough time scoring with a superstar has to play long stretches without him well ..."

Or the ref can take the opposite tack.

In an up-and-down game where points flow freely in the first half, a ref subtly begins accelerating the pace of the foul calls early at the outset of the third quarter, spreads those calls around so no one is in danger of fouling out, and gets both teams into the bonus situation by early in the fourth.

Mathis said he never even considered how a ref might work the over-under scenario, but he did point out that the more calls a ref has to make, the more he risks raising the suspicions of not just players, coaches and officials, but the other two members of the officiating crew. But he contends even that obstacle can be overcome.

"Now that I'm retired, I get calls all the time from coaches, assistants and GMs who want me to explain what they're seeing. Or I watch a game, see a guy three feet from the play get whistled and hear the announcer say, 'I guess the ref saw something we didn't.'

"And my answer," Mathis said, "is, 'No he didn't.' That means one of three things went on. The ref guessed. He's incompetent. Or there's funny stuff going on. ... To me, there's been an accountability problem in how the league office handles officials going back at least 20 years. And now that they're accountable to no one outside that office, it's only gotten worse."

It's worth noting that Mathis served on the referees' union executive board for almost a dozen years and might have an ax to grind. An NBA spokesman said earlier this week the league won't comment further on the Donaghy investigation or any changes in its officiating policy until the federal probe is finished. And Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who's paid $1.5 million in fines to study and lobby for better officiating, replied to an e-mail request for comment simply by saying, "Wish I could."

But one general manager who spoke on the condition of anonymity said the officiating has declined in direct relation to the league's insistence that the group is above criticism.

"If you feel like your bosses are going to cover your (butt) on everything that comes up about your job performance, well, eventually you're bound to feel like no one can touch you. ... They've fostered this environment with these officials," the GM said, "and now they have to deal with the fallout."

Jim Litke is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at jlitke@ap.org

[sturt]

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/bask...tml?eref=si_nba

'Isolated to one individual'

Union unaware of other officials involved in gambling

Posted: Saturday August 18, 2007 1:51AM

NEW YORK (AP) -- The referees union maintained Friday that Tim Donaghy is known to be the only referee involved in gambling activities, despite a report that said he was about to provide names of colleagues who also may have violated NBA rules.

The report on 1050 ESPN Radio in New York said Donaghy will provide prosecutors as many as 20 names of other NBA officials and will detail their involvement in some form of gambling, believed to include betting in casinos.

The offenses may not include criminal activity, according to the report, but could violate NBA policy and lead to firings that would decimate the officiating staff. Twenty referees would make up about a third of the league's roster...........

(Won't happen, unfortunately. )

[Wurider05]

Serves them right. I have been saying for years that they were giving certain players or teams special treatment. Commentators and fans seem to accept that that was simply the way it was. A foul is a foul no matter if it is committed by Lebron James or Royal Ivey.

[Catapult]

Quote:

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they were giving certain players or teams special treatment.

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Not saying that your statement by any means is wrong. But, if Donaghy's reveal is that referees X, Y & Z (+17 others) have attended casinoes and played roulette - it is hardly evidence for "star treatment". It would be against the agreement between the refs and NBA, but might have nothing to do with actual basketball. If the refs were gambling on basketball games then it might be another story.

[Diesel]

It's league policy that refs not even go around a casino..

The casino visit may be just the tip of the iceberg... You don't know.