Open Mic: Fans Need to Understand, Referees Make Mistakes, Too

The practice of sports officiating is always a touchy subject. The concept of having a critical factor of a game determined by people not participating in the game is one that alienates fans to no end. Therefore, the stance taken by most fans becomes: “Every single call you make better be right, and you better not favor any team at all.”

However, that stance is complicated by two major factors. One, officials are human beings too, and will make mistakes just like the players they are officiating.

And secondly, some teams play in such a way where they force officials to blow the whistle on opponents for fouling them. If one team forces an opponent to foul often, why should a ref, in the spirit of fairness, call an equal amount of fouls on both teams?

Honestly, I’ve always held in high esteem of the majority of professional referees and umpires, who do an outstanding job in a thankless environment where anything less then perfection is a cause to be scrutinized.

Some sports have better officiating than other sports, though. With the exception of vague holding and pass interference penalties, the majority of football referees are outstanding in their ability to notice the various infractions that take place during a game. No doubt this is helped by the fact that there are seven total officials on the field during a football game, looking for very specific infractions.

Major League Baseball has terrific base umpires who are nearly flawless in their interpretations of safe/out calls, but too frequently, the lack of outfield umpires and the inability for umpires to understand specific stadium rules is a huge sore to the sport. In a perfect world, there would be two outfield umpires in regular-season contests, and instant replay would be allowed to determine whether or not controversial fly balls are home runs or not.

I rarely watch professional hockey, nor do I understand the nuances of the sport, so the subject of hockey officiating is best left to more knowledgeable sources.

However, the referees that universally get the most criticism from the average sports fan are basketball referees, who are regarded as a group to be blind, biased, suckers who make calls based on star-power, a player’s ability to sell calls by flopping, and by whichever team they are instructed by the league to try and rig.

While some of these accusations have merit, the tin-foil hat conspiracy that the league determines preconceived winners and losers is ridiculous. It has only been perpetuated by fan bases who bitch and moan, failing to realize that their team lacks the talent/discipline/aggressive mindset/versatility/defensive mindset/courage/heart to win NBA championships.

Basketball is the most difficult sport to officiate, for a number of reasons. The majority of the calls are judgment calls in which the players and the referees are in full motion. In baseball, the first base umpire has plenty of time to get into position and focus on one position in determining a safe/out call on a bang-bang play at first base.

But in the NBA, an official has to sprint downcourt while an offensive player is also sprinting down, all while a defensive player may have made slight contact. Depending on the angle, a referee may not have seen any contact, may have seen full-on contact, or may have seen contact but not enough to warrant a foul call. That very notion makes it very difficult for everyone involved to know exactly what a foul is or isn’t in the league.

On plays such as block/charges, a referee has to not only determine whether or not a player established defensive position, but also where his feet are in relation to the defensive circle. On shot blocks, while a player may swat a shot cleanly, a referee not only has to look at his arms, but also his body to determine whether or not a defensive player knocked a defender out of the way from below while blocking the shot from above.

Those are instances where referees have to look at multiple points of a player’s value, all while having angles and perspectives influencing what they see, all while attempting to make these decisions within split-seconds.

No wonder referees make so many bad calls!

Also, it is human nature for referees to rule in favor of players who are aggressive and spectacular. When Dwayne Wade was writing his name on the free throw line in the Finals against Dallas in 2006, Wade abused whatever poor defender Dallas put on him. So naturally, while Wade was blowing past defenders left and right and finishing after drawing contact, the refs were awed into ruling any marginal contact made by Devin Harris, Jerry Stackhouse, et.all, in favor of the Heat.

Fans were furious because Dirk Nowitzki didn’t get the benefit of the doubt on any of his calls. But in reality, James Posey and Udonis Haslem swallowed him up and prevented him from moving to spots without running them over.

Basketball referees will always let you know which players are playing more aggressively, physically, and efficiently than their counterparts—which is why free-throw attempts per game is an effective way in determining whether a player is truly a superstar or not.

However, while these examples will help in understanding the reasoning behind referees' tendencies in genera;, there is no excuse for the sheer number of bad referees in the league.

Many referees have no idea between the difference between marginal contact and contact used to give a player a completive advantage over another player. Many referees will call fouls on defenders even if defenders leap straight up and offensive players leap into them.

Referees (though much better this year than two seasons ago) still reward floppers too many times by justifying any dramatic action as being induced by a foul.

While I will never criticize a player for trying to induce flops and succeeding (winning supersedes “rightness” on a basketball court except under extreme conditions which unfairly violate the integrity of the game and its participants—steroids, for example), I will criticize a referee if he or she determines that a slight forearm from Earl Boykins is enough to send Stephen Jackson sliding on his back 10 feet.

While many fans wish to see technical fouls on floppers, simple no-calls would be even more effective, because the defensive player would be on the floor and an offense would be playing five-on-four.

In the playoffs, flopping usually isn’t a major issue. Anderson Varejao tried to flop five times in Game One of last’s year’s NBA Finals and only succeeded in having a ref blow his whistle once, leading to eight Spurs points. But it still rears its ugly head far too often.

Also, there are far more moving screens in the NBA than are ever called. And there are too many times when a post player backs his shoulder into a defender only to see a defensive player somehow get called for a foul—to say nothing of critical no-calls, such as LeBron James blatantly grabbing Paul Pierce’s shirt to record a steal with the referees’ gaze conveniently absent.

Also, referees are far too harsh in some of their evaluations of flagrant fouls when the player committing the foul is making some kind of legit basketball play, such as Ronnie Turiaf on Ronnie Price. By contrast, plays such as Rip Hamilton’s elbow to Kevin Garnett’s jaw, and the multitude of cheap shots after the whistle exacted by Golden State against Utah during last year’s Conference Semis are called as plain old fouls—or worse, go completely unpunished.

The saving grace is that most of these horrendous calls are sporadic, and will hinder or help each team instead of one specific team.

Incompetence isn’t biased, it just takes away from the game.

And the truth is, with the exception of crucial plays down the stretch or the repeated botching of calls, referees rarely are a significant factor in a team’s winning or losing, regardless of what said team’s fan base may otherwise believe.

Personally, I believe Leon Wood, Steve Javie, Sean Corbin and Bob Delaney to be the best referees because of their competence, their ability to explain to players why a call was called in a specific situation, and their ability to let players vent without tooting their whistles for technicals. Conversely, Joey Crawford repeatedly botches calls, and last season’s fiasco with Tim Duncan was petulant and embarrassing.