NBA needed to humanize its referees

FORT WORTH, Texas – When the Dallas Mavericks joined the NBA in 1980, the culture of officiating was radically different than now. At the time, referees were accessible. Reporters could knock on their locker room door before and after a game and say hello. You could see them in a bar near the arena, or one in the hotel, have a beer with them and talk basketball.

The personal interaction was important because you quickly understood that a guy like Earl Strom, the most outrageous showman of his generation, was human. He brought passion and theatrics to the job, but he also brought acute professionalism.

There were times when Strom seemed to step over the line, but he had a public image and reporters knew him well enough to be certain of his honesty and integrity, and that was conveyed to the public.

No doubt Strom had issues with certain individuals, including Mavericks coach Dick Motta, but even those who had conflicts with him knew he was the best referee in the league.

In the ’80s and ’90s, the NBA sought to depersonalize referees – make them more robotic. We were told that fans paid to see players, not referees. That was hardly a major revelation, but it also missed the point. It was not important for referees to be stars, but it was important to not rob them of their personalities.

Along the way, referees became less accessible and more of a mystery. They were successfully transformed into robots. And finally, perhaps inevitably, we discovered that one of them was miswired – Tim Donaghy.

Former U.S. attorney Larry Pedowitz, who was hired by the NBA to investigate its referees, released the results of a 14-month investigation on Thursday. Pedowitz and his associates found that no referee other than Donaghy bet on games. He also found no evidence that the outcome of any game was manipulated, and, for local conspiracy theorists, that includes the Mavericks-Miami Heat NBA Finals of 2006.

Pedowitz made several recommendations that the NBA has or will adopt. One of those is to make the referees more accessible, which means the NBA has come full circle.

Actually, the league has made progress on its own. I’m not sure that 10 years ago Bob Delaney would have been allowed to write his remarkable book, “Covert,” that detailed his work infiltrating the Mafia when he was in his 20s.

Delaney became somewhat of a star with the book, and that ran counter to the NBA’s recent history.

If there was one strange moment in a conference call with Pedowitz, it was that he was critical of high-stakes card games on NBA team planes. He said he would ban such activities because the culture of gambling simply isn’t healthy.

Yet when asked about the league’s obsession with Las Vegas, which has included summer leagues and two summers of the Olympic team staying at hotel casinos, Pedowitz was suddenly neutral and looked like a bit of a puppet for the commissioner.

“I think that’s a question for commissioner (David) Stern,” Pedowitz said. “It’s not one I can effectively answer.”

If so, that seems to be the only one.

Still, it was a good day for the NBA.