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The D-League will experiment with four and five-person referee crews
The NBA’s minor league will attempt, in an experimental run, to work with four or five referees in a single game. The D-League has decided that, for a few contests anyway, three won’t be enough.
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If the experiment could pan out, the move could go a long way toward pushing the NBA to move toward the use of four or five-person crews, helping eliminate the sort of missed calls that are often lost to the clutter, as three refs attempt to work through the unending action they’ve been charged with lording over.
The D-League, in a press release, announced the move on Monday:
The four-person experiments will be run in two configurations. The first will feature two officials in the lead position and two split between the slot and the trail. The second is highlighted by two officials in the slot position with the additional two as a trail and a lead, respectively. In the five-person tests, the existing three-person system will rotate typically with the two additional officials taking lead stationary positions on each end of the court. The testing comes on the heels of similar experimental four-person crews tested during the 2016 Utah Jazz Summer League.
All games will take place at Barclays Center between late December and March, with various D-League opponents taking on the Long Island Nets, the Brooklyn Nets’ D-League affiliate.
Longtime NBA referee (and current NBA referee el jefe) Bob Delaney welcomed the move:
“We are committed to finding ways to better serve our game and provide the highest levels of training for our officials,” said Bob Delaney, NBA Vice President, Referee Operations & Director of Officials. “We are confident in how our three-person system works and are constantly thinking of ways to improve our game. The four- and five-referee initiative is a prime example of that focus and will help the NBA with research and development. The NBA D-League provides the perfect opportunity to conduct this test.”
You’ll recall that NBA notables Steve Kerr and Mark Cuban both recently took the league and (to a lesser extent) its referees to task for missing obvious traveling calls. The quick retort from those that (in Kerr and Cuban’s case) do not have teams to run is to remind just about anyone who will listen that NBA referees have so, so much to mind as they stare down a typical play. Some of these calls just don’t show up, in an era that has the league itself piling more and more expectations down on a triptych of referees that already had too much on their plate.
Will the addition of two or more referees help? It will be hard to tell even after watching the D-League’s run of games.
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With the addition of a fourth or fifth ref the roles on the court could unofficially turn certain referees into a glorified travel-caller, or clock-watcher. This isn’t the distinction that the D-League and NBA are hoping for, if the press release is any indication, but sometimes these sorts of things fall apart this way.
For those unnerved at too many missed walks or half-court whistles gone silent just by the hair of a point guard’s chinny-chin-chin, this might seem like welcome news. Until, of course, the designated traveling ref or clock spy starts to get a little too perfect with the calls.
And then we have a three-hour game to contend with, as every bit of bad manners is met with a penalty.
Some fans might recall that backlash from players, coaches, referees and even press in the early 1990s when the NBA went from two to three referees per game prior to the 1988-89 season. The criticisms stemming from that move initially had less to do with the three referees zoning off areas of the court to work (a move that was slowly eased out of the league’s literal and figurative line of thinking) as it had to do with what coaches and players felt were a new crew of impersonal referee workers.
Per the NBA’s influence, we should point out. The refs didn’t decide to become robotic all at once, starting in 1990 or so. An overwrought-but-no less significant tax scandal, retirements, and a few firings led to the eventual thinning of the league’s ranks of referees that made their initial hay during the 1970s and 1980s.
The D-League itself later brought a new generation of referees, mostly call-ups, that went by the book far too often for the tastes of players, coaches, and fans. Those referees doggedly worked their ways up the ranks to their great credit, but in doing so created an impersonal style that won the hearts of their bosses in the league office. This by-the-book approach doesn’t lend itself to immediate flexibility in the face of actual other co-workers, and at times (with the league’s younger referees) the on-court relationship between the 13 men and women that are allowed on the actual court certainly suffered.
Delaney, whose career straddled a generation where Earl Strom and Jake O’Donnell could make the NBA’s highlight videos with their amplified comments and the more recent, less-flashy modern stylings, wants to find a healthy middle.
From a discussion with Sean Deveney at Sporting News:
Communication with referees was slashed. But granting referees more authority did not defuse conflict. “We used to give a warning,” Delaney said. “That was the thing—you put the hand up, stop. But it became more of an irritant, because with that came the attitude of, ‘Not tonight, I am done with you, get back on your bench.’
“It became parental. It goes from being a coach-referee interaction to becoming man-on-man. It actually made things rise up.”
[…]
“We came up with some words that, instead of saying, ‘Not tonight, not in my game,’ we had different words to be able to soften it,” Delaney said, “and be able to still say the same thing but in a different way. So we came up with code phrases. Instead of a warning, we would say, ‘Let’s move on, time to move on. We’ve talked about this enough.’ That means the same as a warning, but it is a different way of saying it so maybe it is not as challenging. … We work with them on understanding the heat of the moment and emotion.”
Will adding one or two more humans to the mix – with their resultant mix of responsiveness and responsibility – change all of this? That’s hard to say. As always, it will depend on the actual humans involved even if the D-League experiment moves the NBA to add more refs to each big league game.
Anything would be better than the slow crawl toward sterility that began in the late 1990s, following the tax purge, the introduction of new rules and the inevitable introduction of newer, younger referees.
From Deveney’s feature at the Sporting News:
“I noticed a difference at the end of my career,” said Grant Hill, NBA TV analyst and an NBA star from 1994-2013. “The officials did not interact and engage in that kind of dialogue. I enjoyed it when I first came into the league, where, with certain officials who had been around a long time, you could have a conversation with those guys, you would talk to each other and you got to know their personalities. There was always a little bit of back-and-forth, and I thought it was healthy. But I noticed that newer officials who came in at the end of my career, you couldn’t engage in that kind of conversation and dialogue.”
More people, more talking?
Even with a more crowded court, there is plenty of room to move around within this. A proper crew, no matter the size, would be just that – an actual team that works to enhance each others’ individual qualities, nailing all those travel calls, while (perhaps, as we can dream while the snow falls) working with enough gravitas and steeled will to talk each other out of the too-perfect, block/charge-lousy games that the NBA’s league office encourages.
The NBA, in a move we applaud, is after perfection. Which might involve four or five referees.
That’s fine. That’s admirable. We’d still prefer that the addition of new voices leaves room to work. To agree upon what is expected, prior to finding a way to somehow buff past the sheen until the whole things feels organic.
Let’s work past that perfection:
The change might begin in Brooklyn. We’ll be watching.
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!
