More than any other sport, basketball gives its officials the power to shape the tone and tenor of a game. This is especially true in the NBA, where an official’s influence is accentuated during the playoffs — a powder keg of emotion that can explode on every possession.
There is a sense among an increasing number of players and coaches, however, that officials have become too visible, too intrusive, often as large a part of the game as players and coaches. The NBA officials Dick Bavetta, Joey Crawford, Danny Crawford and Steve Javie are almost as well known as the players.
They have their reputations, their egos, their own styles. Most important, each has a philosophy of how the game should be officiated. As if players didn’t have enough to contend with, they have to adjust to officials from night to night.
PHOTOS: AFP
There are complaints from coaches and players about a lack of consistency, an unevenness in the application of the rules and lack of coordination among officials. A league with calls for stars, calls for the regular season, calls that change from game to game and from possession to possession.
After Thursday’s Game 5 loss, Orlando’s Dwight Howard said he had to get more physical against Cleveland, and especially against LeBron James.
Asked if he thought he could be as physical as he wanted to be, Howard said simply: “Nope.”
“This has been by far the most herky-jerky, a lot of technical fouls, ejections, suspensions. I guess that’s how they told them to officiate the playoffs this year,” Orlando’s Rafer Alston said.
One night a national TV audience watched Kobe Bryant get pushed hard in the back by the Nuggets’ Dahntay Jones in Game 3 as Bryant drives for a layup. No flagrant. Then Bryant was tripped by Jones. No call, although on Wednesday the NBA finally announced that Jones would receive a flagrant foul for the trip.
On Tuesday, Orlando’s Dwight Howard was hit with a technical for taunting. Howard had scored on a great individual effort despite nearly having his head taken off as he drove to the basket. Howard roared after he scored and was hit with a technical for the show of emotion.
On Wednesday, the league rescinded Howard’s technical, but increasingly you have to wonder: What are these officials thinking?
“I think it’s tough for some players,” Alston said. “But I’ve been able to get in a rhythm and just totally disregard the officiating and stay in the game.”
Alston was a New York City playground legend. He is the product of an environment where officials are what they should be: Props. The game is what’s important.
“I think you know going in, the officiating is going to be up and down and sporadic, but as a player, you’ve got to stay in the game and understand what you do as a player and as a team is more important than the officials,” Alston said.
Officials have become an essential part of the game, although if push came shove, the game could go on without them. It always has.
What is the role of an official? What is the official’s proper relationship to the player?
Here’s a suggestion as the NBA attempts to deal with its referee conundrum. Each official should spend a couple of Saturday mornings this summer at the local park watching pickup games. Ordinary games: No whistles, no officials, just the tried-and-true honor system that has worked for decades.
Every player in these playoffs — from Kobe and LeBron to the last man on the bench — grew up playing on the playground without referees. Sure, the games were a little longer, some of the calls may have been disputed and there was more trash-talking. But there were never officials and somehow everyone got through it unscathed.
The game is as pure without referees as it is with them. Maybe even more so. Players know justice, know what’s right and what’s wrong.
As Magic Johnson said when I asked him about the concept of official-less games: “Everybody knows when a foul is a foul.”
Even as the public becomes riveted by these playoffs, there continues to be an undercurrent of cynicism — almost snickering. The game, thanks largely to officials, has become part carnival. It might as well have bearded ladies and three-headed dogs.
And it’s a shame because the NBA has the world’s greatest players and coaches. The league does not have the world’s greatest officiating — except in its own mind.
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