Sports Column

Referees will have to accept new era

On Sports

By dwight jaynes

The Portland Tribune, Aug 7, 2007, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (7 Reader comments)

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.

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