Escalating tensions between players and officials led to a recent meeting between the leaders of their unions, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN.
Lee Seham, general counsel for the National Basketball Referees Association, called players association executive director Michele Roberts to discuss several recent incidents, including ejections involving high-profile players such as LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant, who has been tossed from three games this season. Also, official Courtney Kirkland received a week’s suspension after a head-butting altercation with Shaun Livingston.
Seham and Roberts talked for more than two hours about a wide range of issues, including the referees’ stance that the league has allowed too much leniency to players to verbally attack them. Roberts said players believe the refs have become disrespectful on the court and get particularly upset when officials hold up their hands in an effort to silence them.
“Our players also complained about being ignored, told to ‘shut up,’ told to ‘move’ or, in extreme circumstances, hit with a technical,” Roberts said. “There have been four or five occasions when a player has gone to say, ‘Hey, what’s up with that?’ and the official holds his hand up like a stop sign, like, ‘I don’t have time to talk to you.’ … Lee [Seham] told me, ‘That’s what they’re trained to do.'”
“What is going to make a difference is to have our players sit down and discuss their grievances with officials,” she said. “They clearly can’t do that on the court. We need to do it at a time when there’s no game on the line, or you’re not thinking, ‘What’s he or she going to do to me in the next quarter if I complain?’ We need to sit down over a cup of coffee or even a can of beer and get some things off everyone’s chests and hear the other side’s perspective. We talked about this a couple of years ago. I thought it would be interesting. Now I think it’s something that’s necessary.”
The NBA has altered its referee management program since Adam Silver took over as commissioner, Wojnarowski adds, but its working relationship with officials has worsened. Emails reveal that the officials union has challenged the league office on several issues, including what it considers to be “intimidating behavior” from Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.
awwwwww, too bad for the overpaid crybaby players,,,, start acting like adults and be treated like adults,,,now on the other hand, some of those refs need to be replaced by real refs.
So you’re saying the refs are bad but the players aren’t allowed to complain about it? Smart.
Troll
Strong rebuttal
Again, Troll
Positive step.
Theres problems on both sides.
The players need to stop complaining so much its really annoying to watch.
Also, refs need to be stone faced, which is often not the case.
The refs should have the right to tell a player they don’t wanna hear it. Like get out of my face. I’m ok with that.
The “so-called superstars” think that they should get away with doing what they want on the court … rookies should be treated just like the “superstars”, a foul is a foul … I don’t care who commits it. Also, the refs should not have to take the verbal abuse that they are subject to … players need to know that they aren’t going to change the refs minds. If it’s an obvious error, inform their coach who can speak to the refs …
Refs need to stay bigger than the moment, stay cool and call the game. And professional basketball players should act like PROFESSIONAL basketball players and not kid-denied-ice-cream-cone basketball players.
Hard to come down on refs who have to deal with these big babies and some of their ridiculous on-court antics. But it doesn’t help when refs get vindictive.
Entitled millionairs. “Nobody can tell me what to do”… yet no mention of how LeBron cries to the refs after every single play, foul or no foul. How about punishing players for being liars and flopping? Harden would be out of a job!
In response to players complaining about obvious calls, I get the urge to look to this phone to provide something more worth my time. Baby-men.
Players think they can go no wrong and deserve an instant appeals process and maybe a break for fatigue as well. Refs don’t blow them off quickly enough. BTW I’m not talking about Lebron J for the most part.