NBA announces 5-pronged initiative to improve player-referee relationships

Amid a worsening on-court relationship between players and officials, NBA President of League Operations Byron Spruell announced a five-pronged initiative aimed at finding harmony between the two sides on Friday. The program, which will be overseen by NBA Senior Vice President, Head of Referee Operations Michelle Johnson, as well as Monty McCutchen — a former top-ranked referee who recently accepted a job as NBA Vice President, Head of Referee Development and Training — features these five areas of emphasis: Johnson, McCutchen and their staffs will conduct meetings with all 30 teams to discuss rules interpretations, on-court conduct, and the expectations of NBA referees. These meetings will begin before the NBA All-Star break. The league will re-emphasize its “Respect for the Game” rules with referees, coaches, and players to ensure consistent enforcement of those violations. The NBA Referee Operations department will expand its overall rules education initiative for coaches, players, and team personnel to ensure clarity of the game’s rules and their proper interpretations. Johnson and McCutchen will conduct enhanced training for the referees on conflict resolution. In addition, they will more closely monitor the on-court interactions of coaches, players, and referees to ensure referee decorum meets league standards. Through the NBA’s Officiating Advisory Council, the league will create opportunities for engagement with all key stakeholders to find common ground between all parties. “As a league, we take great pride in standing for the best things about sports: competition, teamwork, respect, sportsmanship, diversity and inclusion,” Spruell said in the statement. “Recently we have seen instances in which we have not lived up to our own collective standards with regard to sportsmanship. It is important for us to place a renewed emphasis on proper communication and respect to make sure we are meeting the standards expected from all members of the NBA family.” How did we get here? Referees don’t have an easy job. They have to officiate high-stakes matchups between the best basketball players on the planet. Sometimes those games get chippy. Other times, they get testy. This season, players and referees have been in an ostensibly never-ending power struggle, and it’s affected the outcome on the court. On the day of the announcement, players had been ejected 40 times this season, according to data from Fox Sports, with reigning NBA Finals MVP Kevin Durant leading the way with four disqualifications. Thirty-six (36) players have picked up four or more technical fouls this season, with Warriors forward Draymond Green ahead of the pack at 11 and both Durant and Dwight Howard tied at 10. There have been 462 techs called already. There was also an on-court altercation between Shaun Livingston and referee Courtney Kirkland, who was removed from the officiating rotation for a week after going forehead-to-forehead with the Warriors guard. Livingston was also ejected from that game and suspended an additional one. Players are usually assessed a five-figure fine for publicly criticizing the officiating after a game, but this season, they have bitten the bullet in the name of speaking out. Chris Paul lambasted Scott Foster after he was issued a technical foul late in the Rockets’ Jan. 10 win over the Trail Blazers. Foster, a 24-year officiating veteran, was voted by players and coaches as the worst NBA referee in a 2016 Los Angeles Times survey. “Yeah, Scott Foster at his finest,” Paul said. “You know what I mean? He just never fails. ”Some of them, you can [communicate] with. You’ve just gotta figure out who you can and you can’t. I got a tech tonight. I’m over there with [referee Courtney Kirkland] saying, ‘That’s Scott, that’s Scott,’ and I got a tech. That’s history there. He the man. That’s who they pay to see.” Durant took it a step further with his post-game comments after he was ejected from a Jan. 23 matchup against the Knicks. “He was searching for me,” Durant said. “He was looking to try to tech me up to get me back because he’s still in his feelings from the first half. That’s what’s been going on around the league the whole year. A bunch of that.” He later apologized for his comments, calling himself “a diva” and said he did “look like a jerk out there” on the court against the Knicks. The NBA Referees Association accepted Durant’s apology. Carmelo Anthony said the game has changed a lot since he was drafted in 2003, citing that once upon a time, players and officials had dialogue. “Now, the trigger is too quick,” he said, via ESPN’s Royce White. “You look at somebody wrong, you get a technical foul. You say one wrong thing, you get a technical foul. So I think that’s the difference from when I came in, the dialogue and communication and the relationship the players and officials [had] when I first came in and from now is a lot different.” Where do we go from here? Well, it appears initiative No. 1 is the most important: Have officials sit down and conduct meetings with all 30 teams. That would allow for the dialogue Anthony said was missing to be revisited and give a platform for both players and officials to air their grievances. Basketball is a physical sport, and officials have to make calls on bang-bang plays. Hopefully this new NBA initiative is a step in the right direction.

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