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Refereeing the refs
Yes, they make mistakes, but cut the officials some slack
Posted: Wednesday June 05, 2002 10:23 AM
Rarely have I heard an anticipatory buzz like the one before last Sunday's Game
7 Western Conference final between the Los Angeles Lakers and Sacramento Kings
at Arco Arena. Do you know who they are? Do you know who they're sending?
No, the buzz was not about which celebrities were showing up -- we were in
Sacramento, after all. It was about which refereeing crew the NBA would assign
to officiate what to that point had been an unevenly whistled series. Everyone
was amazed when Danny Crawford, Bernie Fryer and Ed T. Rush walked
onto the court. They are not considered la crème de la crème of
zebras; Fryer, in fact, was the ref who mistakenly waved off a game-winning
three-point shot taken by the Charlotte Hornets' Baron Davis against
Orlando earlier in the postseason.
Fortunately, on Sunday that crew did one of the better jobs I've seen in the
playoffs, though Sacramento, I'm sure, wouldn't agree. So convinced were the
Kings that the series had been stolen from them before Game 7 even a three-man
team of Oliver Wendell Holmes, King Solomon and Judge Amy wouldn't
have satisfied them. Moreover, I must've heard at least 10 casual conversations
on the street about how poorly the series was refereed, and it wasn't just
disgruntled Sacramento fans who thought the Lakers got the majority of
advantageous
calls.
I want you to know that I hate talking about the refs. Officiating is an
impossibly difficult job. People who complain about the refs wouldn't last four
minutes whistling an NBA game, maybe even a high school game. So, it is with
some reluctance that I plunge -- before the opening game of the Finals between
the Lakers and New Jersey Nets -- into this hot-button subject. Here's some of
what I
believe:
League officials do not gather refs in a room and instruct them about
which team they want to win, or mandate that a series goes seven games. If any
reporter in the history of the world believed that, I would hope he'd
investigate it. The league has more integrity than
that.
However, Game 6 of the Kings-Lakers series was one of the worst
officiated games I've ever seen. The Lakers did get most of the
calls.
Sacramento center Vlade Divac is one of my favorite people in
the league, but he let his preoccupation with the refs affect his play in
Sunday's
game.
Refs, like players, are subject to momentum. That, in my opinion, is
what happened to the officials in Game 6. Shaq was rocking and Shaq was
rolling, and Shaq got most of the
calls.
Superstars like O'Neal and Kobe Bryant get more calls than
other players, always have, always will. The Lakers have two superstars, so it's
predictable -- not fair, but predictable -- that they would've gotten more
whistles in their favor than the Kings. The two worst calls I saw involving
those two players both occurred (no surprise) in Game 6. In the first quarter,
Mike Bibby was called for a foul on Bryant even though the Kings point
guard didn't come within a foot of touching Kobe and, in the fourth, the same
thing happened to Scot Pollard when he was guarding Shaq. And that was
Pollard's sixth
foul.
Having said that, I ask you to recall Game 2 of the series. The refs
fouled Shaq out of that
one.
The most egregious non-call made (or not made) on O'Neal has nothing
to do with the physical contact he initiates. It's when he takes two steps,
stops, then takes another. The man is already unstoppable; he's
absolutely unstoppable when he's allowed to walk or stay in the lane for
more than three
seconds.
The worst mistake a ref can make is to anticipate a foul, i.e.,
assume that contact will be made by a defender when an offensive player goes to
the basket. Shaq got a couple of those phantom calls in Game
6.
Yes, Divac does flop quite often. But the Lakers have three excellent
tumblers themselves in Robert Horry, Derek Fisher and Rick Fox,
who dove so much in the Sacramento series that it sometimes looked as if a
3-meter springboard competition had broken
out.
Refereeing will not, in my opinion, be a major topic of conversation
during the Finals. (Which will make the NBA ecstatic.) Divac's reputation for
flopping laid the groundwork for a ref-centric series and the momentum built
from there. The Lakers and Nets don't have that kind of built-in foundation to
their
rivalry.
My fervent hope is that these are my last words about refereeing ... at least
until next
season.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum covers the NBA beat for the
magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com.
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