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CHAPTER 4

Men in Stripes

Long before Charles Barkley was coaxed into paying off his $400,000 marker at a Las Vegas casino in 2008, gambling was a firmly entrenched form of entertainment within the NBA family. Being an NBA referee means having lots of downtime. Games typically start at 7:00 PM local time, and we were generally out of the building by around 11:00 PM. A quick trip to the airport the next morning and it’s on to another city, sometimes a day or two before the next game. If the weather was good, we might play golf. If the weather was bad, we would do anything to pass the time and escape the boredom. Referee Mike “Duke” Callahan and I would occasionally sit in a hotel room and roll a golf ball toward the front door for hours at a time. The game was called “rolly bolly,” and we would bet $20 a roll to see who could get it closest to the door without hitting it. Now that’s boredom.

During training camp we played Liar’s Poker. The games were competitive because we were all good liars, but Mark Wunderlich was by far the best bullshitter I’ve ever met. He owned me in Liar’s Poker. Once on a U. S. Airways flight from Chicago to Philly, Wunderlich, Callahan, and I played Liar’s Poker for the entire trip, passing cash back and forth from one seat to the next. We even asked other passengers to provide change for our larger bills. The flight attendants thought we were nuts!

When veteran referee Joe Crawford was charged and convicted for failing to report all of his NBA income on his tax return, he became very depressed. To cheer him up, the other refs in the Philadelphia area and I chipped in and bought him an expensive poker table. On many occasions we would play cards at Joe’s house and have a lot of laughs.

Betting on golf was also popular with the referees. Mark Wunderlich and I would meet up with Steve Javie and his friend J.D. for a round of golf at private courses near Philadelphia. We started calling J.D. “the Fish” because he was so easy to beat. On a golfing road trip to Whitemarsh Valley Country Club in Lafayette Hill, Pennsylvania, we stopped at a Super Fresh Food Market and bought a large fish head to put in J.D.’s locker. When he opened the locker and saw those fish eyes staring right back at him, he said, “What’s this?”

“Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes,” I replied, laughing so hard I almost pissed my pants.

Wunderlich and I always cleaned up on Javie and J.D., pocketing several hundred dollars each.

It wasn’t just golf and cards. There was always a racetrack or a casino to visit when we were on the road. The casinos were a magnet for referees, especially in a city like New Orleans where Harrah’s was only a few blocks from the hotel where we stayed. There were also casinos in the Seattle area and in Vancouver, British Columbia. On one particular trip, Steve Javie, Tommy Nunez Sr., and I drove from Portland, Oregon, to Vancouver to work a Grizzlies game. Along the way we stopped at three casinos and stretched a three-hour drive into a 15-hour odyssey. When we finally arrived at our hotel in Vancouver, we immediately went to the casino in the lower level and gambled the night away. Although I loved casinos, I was always concerned that someone might recognize me. Some guys ran into players and coaches and got scared. That’s when we decided to drive down the highway to out-of-town casinos just to be on the safe side. The last thing a referee wants is for a player or coach to get some “dirt” on him.

Referees Scott Foster, Bernie Fryer, and I used to joke around about going to Vegas after we retired and playing in the World Series of Poker while wearing our NBA jackets. We played Texas hold’em all the time and had gotten pretty good. We got a kick out of imagining ourselves playing in the final round, televised by ESPN, surrounded by stacks of chips, wearing the NBA logo for the entire world to see.

Even when we hit the court, the friendly wagers didn’t stop. Joe Crawford, Steve Javie, and I would place bets on all types of promotional events held during timeouts. Most arenas have some sort of animated race on the overhead scoreboard; for example, a race between three computer-generated M&M candy contestants. Sounds silly, but we weren’t about to be left out of the action. Looking up at the scoreboard during a timeout, the conversation would sound something like this:

“Who do you have, 1, 2, or 3?”

“I like 3 for $20.”

“I’m going with 1. Have your cash ready, you rat bastard.”

The crowd roared as the M&Ms raced down the homestretch. The winner was No. 1, and one of us would walk out of the arena with an extra $20 in his pocket.

We would also bet on kids pulled from the crowd who raced around the court on bikes or ran up and down the floor wearing the oversized shirts and shoes of NBA players. Since there wasn’t much for us to do during timeouts, we either stood around and stared at the cheerleaders—Dallas had by far the best—or we bet on the timeout entertainment. We always had a $20 bill to put down on something.

I even made a bet once with one of the highest-ranking executives in the NBA’s league office. The 2001 NBA All-Star Game was played at the MCI Center in downtown Washington, D.C. I was assigned to referee the three-point shooting contest during All-Star weekend. Just prior to the event, I was standing at the scorer’s table with Stu Jackson, the NBA’s Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations.

“Who do you think will win?” I asked Stu.

“Ray Allen,” he replied.

“I like Peja,” I countered. Peja Stojakovic was a deadly three-point shooter for the Sacramento Kings, and I thought he would win.

“No,” Stu insisted. “Ray Allen.”

“You wanna bet?” I boldly asked.

Keep in mind that we weren’t sitting in a noisy bar a thousand miles from the scene. We were courtside, at the scorer’s table, and Ed T. Rush, the Supervisor of Officials, was sitting next to Stu, listening to the entire conversation.

“Twenty bucks,” Stu replied.

“You’re on!” I exclaimed.

The three-point contest was an event I could actually influence, if I had chosen to do so. As a referee, I had to decide if a basket was good, if the shooter’s feet were behind the line, and if the last shot left the shooter’s hand before the buzzer sounded. However, once we got started, I just put the bet out of my mind and did my job. And wouldn’t you know it, Ray Allen had the magic touch that night and won the event. I looked over at Stu and he was sitting there with a big smile on his face. That’s when I realized, Oh shit! I lost $20! I gotta pay the man! I was hoping that because Stu was my boss and he was getting a kick out of all of this, that maybe I’d be in his good graces. Perhaps I would be assigned to ref an extra round of the playoffs and make an additional $15,000 or $20,000. Stu was having fun with it, I was having fun with it, and everyone around us was laughing. I figured the $20 was a small investment in my future and money well spent.

Before Stu joined the NBA’s front office, he had an undistinguished career as head coach of the Wisconsin Badgers as well as the NBA’s New York Knicks and Vancouver Grizzlies. He also served as Vancouver’s general manager, and as I handed the money to Stu, I couldn’t resist taking a shot at him.

“Stu, if you would have made draft picks as well as you called this event, you’d still be a general manager in the league!” I said.

When Ed T. Rush heard my remark, he just about fell over laughing. So there we were, a top NBA executive and a veteran referee settling a bet, courtside, at the three-point shootout of the 2001 All-Star Game. Go figure!

The big question on everyone’s mind is, “Did Tim Donaghy fix games?” The answer is no. I didn’t need to fix them. I usually knew which team was going to win based on which referees had been assigned to the game, their personalities, and the relationships they had with the players and coaches of the teams involved.

Joe Crawford and Dick Bavetta are two of the NBA’s top officials, but the only thing consistent about their refereeing styles is the inconsistency. It was almost impossible for a referee to watch Joe one night and then work with Dick the next. Let’s start with technical fouls. Crawford would give guys a T if they looked at him funny. Bavetta, on the other hand, acted like he didn’t hear a player who called him a “no-good motherfucker” right to his face. We often joked about how Crawford would let a guy get killed driving to the basket, while Bavetta would blow the whistle if a defender breathed on someone too hard.

Their reasoning behind how they called a game was different, too. Crawford wanted the game over quickly so he could kick back, relax, and have a beer; Bavetta wanted it to keep going so he could hear his name on TV. He actually paid an American Airlines employee to watch all the games he worked and write down everything the TV commentators said about him. No matter how late the game was over, he’d wake her up for a full report. He loved the attention.

Many of my fellow referees would do anything to get “face time” on the networks, and they worked hard to cultivate novel tricks to attract the camera’s eye during a game. It could be as simple as spinning the ball on one finger, calling fouls in an over-the-top and highly animated way, “checking on something” at the scorer’s table to get the attention of the game announcers, being overly aggressive in calling technical fouls, hamming it up with the cheerleaders or team mascots, or even having the floor wiped with a towel so that the camera would zoom in for a close-up. The glitz and glamour of an NBA contest is addicting, and referees are certainly not immune from being caught up in the bright lights. At times, I had the impression that some referees thought the fans showed up to see them and not the game.

Veteran referee Jess Kersey was one of those guys who clearly loved the attention that went with a career as an NBA ref. Kersey managed to get knocked down by players so frequently—consequently getting himself some TV time—that it became an inside joke among the other referees. A real character on and off the court, Kersey was the kind of likeable guy who would show up on an airplane with a pizza for the flight attendants. Unfortunately, he was also known for consuming large quantities of Gatorade and vodka immediately after a game. A few years back, I worked a game with him and Dee Kantner in Milwaukee. After the game, Kersey partook of his favorite elixir and proceeded to drive us to Chicago in a rental car for a game the following evening. During the drive, he slammed the car into a toll booth, causing considerable damage. The accident landed him in rehab, where he began a long journey to recovery. To his credit, he faced his demons and conquered them.

When the NBA hired referees, talent and ability were well down on the list of job requirements. Nepotism ran rampant, and sometimes getting a job often had little to do with how good an official you were; it was all about who you knew, or better yet, who you were related to.

Darell Garretson was the first to hire his son, Ron, back in the 1980s. Ron was able to move up the ladder fast since his dad was the boss, but most of the staff thought his skills were only on par with a second-round official.

People naively thought this display of nepotism wouldn’t happen again, but then Joe Borgia was hired. Joe was the son of Sid Borgia, a former referee who himself became a supervisor. The NBA also hired James Capers Sr.’s son, James Capers Jr. Fortunately for James Jr., James Sr. was a group supervisor and had input on which referees advanced in the playoffs. Scott Wall’s father Bill was in charge of USA Basketball and a friend of David Stern’s. Matt Winick, who assigned referees to games, thought Wall never should have been hired, and he made derogatory comments to staff members about Wall’s ability. I can’t claim immunity from favoritism, either—when I was hired, Billy Oakes was a top official on the staff. Billy also happened to be my uncle. So I benefited from my connections, too.

Ronnie Nunn took the league’s nepotism to a whole new level when he became the boss. He hired Tommy Nunez Sr.’s son, Tommy Jr., as well as old friends from years past. Robbie Robinson wasn’t even refereeing basketball when Nunn called and told him to start working again. He was fired two years after he was hired. But Nunn still didn’t learn his lesson. He hired David Guthrie, the son of John Guthrie (John had been Nunn’s college basketball coach at George Washington University) and an average referee at best. Zach Zarba was a local guy Nunn had known for years, and Nunn tried to push him up the ladder until Stu Jackson stepped in and put a stop to it. Many officials were linked to someone, and no one cared enough to question it much less stop it.

There were certain refs I never wanted to work with, and if I got partnered with them for a crew, I knew I was in for a trip from hell. I remember one nightmarish game I worked with Joe Crawford and Phil Robinson. Minnesota and New Orleans were in a tight game going into the last minute, and Crawford told us to make sure that we were 100 percent sure of the call every time we blew the whistle. When play resumed, Minnesota coach Flip Saunders started yelling at us to make a call. Robinson got intimidated and blew the whistle on New Orleans. The only problem was it wasn’t the right call. Tim Floyd, the Hornets’ coach, went nuts. He stormed the court and kicked the ball into the top row of the stadium. Robinson had to throw him out, and Minnesota won the game.

When our crew went into the locker room to review the play, Crawford let Robinson have it. He started screaming, “Didn’t I tell you not to blow your whistle unless you knew what the hell you were calling? You screwed up this whole game!”

Robinson started screaming back, “I’m a grown man! Do not talk to me like that!”

They just wouldn’t let up. To make matters worse, when we called the office they wanted a full breakdown of the game by the next morning. That meant we got to stay up all night and bang out stats from the tape. Lucky us.

I’m not a drinker, but that night I thought about becoming one. Just when I thought my referee duties were done for the night, I had to go back to the hotel and referee the two guys from my crew while they got loaded and tried to break down the tape. After a bottle of Jack Daniels and two six-packs of beer, Crawford and Robinson were so hammered they were screaming and laughing the entire time we were filling out the reports. As it turned out, we had a blast.

Later that week, Ronnie Nunn told me that we could have made something up at the other end against Minnesota to even things out. He even got specific—maybe we should have considered calling a traveling violation on Kevin Garnett. Talk about the politics of the game! Of course the official statement from the league office will always read, “There is no such thing as a makeup call.”

The NBA has been dominated by men for a long time. After all, the players are male, so it seems to make sense that the refs are, too. But about 12 years ago, two women were suddenly hired: Violet Palmer and Dee Kantner. How did that happen? A woman named Sandy Ortiz successfully sued the NBA on grounds of gender discrimination seeking a referee’s position. The NBA had to pay her a large amount of money, and they must have wanted to forestall any other legal action by female referees. So they went into the college game and chose Kantner and Palmer, one white and one black. We all liked Palmer, who had a terrific way with people. Kantner was a little more abrasive, and her strong and cocky personality probably had something to do with the reason she was fired after five seasons. Well, that and her performance.

Quite frankly, I thought they were both terrible referees, and many others agreed. Joe Crawford used to say he wouldn’t use either of them to referee a high school JV game. Because most of their experience was at the collegiate level, both Kantner and Palmer had trouble with the pace of the NBA game. But that didn’t really matter—the fact that they were women was the only thing the league seemed to care about. Occasionally, the NBA would pluck a top referee from the college ranks, but those guys can make more money than a first-year NBA ref so it was hard to convince them to leave their jobs. Kantner and Palmer appeared pretty much out of nowhere. It was obvious to me they were brought in to quell an unpleasant public relations and legal situation.

I remember calling a Utah Jazz game one night with Dee Kantner. Jazz coach Jerry Sloan had one of the foulest mouths in the NBA, and he was on Kantner throughout the game like white on rice. He would be yelling things like, “What the fuck are you fucking doing out there? You don’t know what the fuck you’re doing! That’s a fucking foul down there!”

While he was yelling at her during a free-throw attempt, I was standing all the way on the other side of the court. Again, you could hear his foul language from at least 10 rows up; everybody could hear him. As I started walking over, Jerry started going off on me. “And you!” he yelled, pointing at me, but before he could get out another word, I T’d him up.

He just laughed. He had been trying to get Kantner to give him a technical foul the whole time. He was just trying to see how far he could push her, testing her limits like a five-year-old. Either she was too scared to call a T on him, or she probably thought the technical fouls would just bring attention to her, and, therefore, she’d have to explain it to the league office.

Kantner was really hot at me as we headed to the break. During halftime, she picked up a water cooler and threw it at me.

“Who the fuck do you think you are to ride in on your white horse to save me?” she demanded.

“Obviously you didn’t hear what he said to you,” I responded, trying to give her the benefit of the doubt. “Because if you had heard what he said, you’d have given him a T yourself.”

Instead, she was just furious at me for giving Sloan the technical that, if she had been the least bit courageous or even professional, she would have given him herself. But she’s not the only one—plenty of refs would let players and coaches call them motherfuckers up and down the court and act like they had never heard a thing. The referees were just too scared of giving guys a T and getting in hot water with the league office. The postscript to Kantner’s story is that after she was fired, there were rumors that she was going to sue. Suddenly, she found herself with a job working with the referees in the WNBA.

When I came into the league, Darell Garretson was the Supervisor of Officials. Garretson was a tough guy. I would sometimes be in the room with him when he got phone calls from coaches and general managers who would complain about referees. He would literally tell those guys to go fuck themselves, in that specific language. He wouldn’t take shit from any of those guys, but he left his position in 1998.

At the time, there was a debate going on in the NBA as to what the “clear path” rule meant. A clear path situation was also known as a “breakaway.” It’s when a defender steals the ball and sprints down the court for a layup, and a player from the other team fouls him from behind. Does the offensive player have a “clear path” to the basket if there is a defender parallel to him? It sounds confusing, and it is. We were having a referees meeting prior to the 1996-97 season, and all 60 regular referees were in the room. Darell Garretson and his boss, Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations Rod Thorn, were debating the clear path rule in front of all the refs. They couldn’t agree about what the rule meant and subsequently got into a shouting match.

“Don’t tell me about the rule!” Thorn yelled at Garretson. “You weren’t at the competition committee meeting where we talked about it. You elected not to go!”

“I’m just trying to clarify it,” Darell shot back heatedly.

Thorn turned to the audience of referees. “Does anyone in the room not fucking know what I mean by a clear path rule?” he asked angrily.

We were totally silent, like kids watching a teacher and the principal getting into an argument. We had never seen anything like it. I’ll tell you this—none of us dared to challenge Thorn, who was the boss of our boss. To be honest, we were confused ourselves about the clear path rule—it’s a confusing rule. But by then the tension in the room was so thick we thought Garretson and Thorn might start throwing punches. Suddenly Bob Lanier, who was working in the NBA front office at the time, got up and shouted, “Whoa, whoa, whoa! Timeout! All referees out of the room! Let’s talk about this without these guys in here.”

So the 60 of us quickly filed out of the room, and through the closed door we could hear Thorn and Garretson screaming at each other, calling each other motherfuckers. We were actually laughing, saying things like, “Who’s got money on Rod and who’s got money on Darell?” as if they were going to get into a fistfight.

That was the end of the line for Darell. He “resigned” the next year and was replaced by Ed T. Rush. Rush took a very different approach with the coaches and general managers. He told them, “We want to have open communication. If there’s a problem, call me.” So the coaches and general managers would get on the phone with Rush whenever they had a problem. Even Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban would call him to discuss things. But Rush inevitably gave the benefit of the doubt to the referee. He always had excuses like, “That was a hard game to call.” Cuban finally got frustrated with what he considered Rush’s line of bullshit and tried to get him fired. To his credit, Cuban wanted the game called by the book—a travel is a travel, a palm is a palm. He would say, “I want to have my team built and coached the right way. Call the game as it is in the rules.” But he was a lone voice in the wilderness trying to get rid of the special treatment for certain players, coaches, and owners.

Ed T. Rush had been working as an NBA ref since 1966. Injuries forced him to retire following the 1996-97 season, and the NBA office hired him as the Director of Officiating in 1998. Since the retirement plan didn’t pay nearly as much as disability did, a lot of refs approaching retirement managed to get “injured” and took the disability plan instead. As director, he hired a large staff of assistants to help him. Too many cooks spoil the broth, and too many assistants made our life a living hell—no one did things the same way. Rush was a champion bullshitter. He was one of those guys who wanted everyone to agree with him, and as a result he was two-faced. Rush told one referee what he wanted to hear and then turned right around and told someone else the exact opposite. This put the staff in a constant state of confusion.

Rush loved to play favorites, and instead of moving the best referees up the ladder, he moved his buddies up instead. Referees are rated by five separate entities: the coaches, the general managers, the group supervisors, the Director of Officiating, and the Executive Vice President of Basketball Operations. Those last two count the most, and Rush was a master of office politics, moving refs up and down based on friendships or personal feelings instead of their talent on the floor.

As it turns out, I wasn’t the only one who saw through Ed T. Rush. In a 2002 interview in the Dallas Morning News, Mark Cuban said, “Ed Rush might have been a great ref, but I wouldn’t hire him to manage a Dairy Queen. His interest is not the integrity of the game or improving the officiating. The No. 1 priority of Ed Rush is maintaining power. There’s no question in my mind that [NBA Commissioner] David Stern is not the most powerful man in the game. It’s Ed Rush.” As usual, the NBA office didn’t respond well to that level of honesty: Cuban was later fined $500,000 by the league.

But Cuban had it right. Rush did think he was king of the NBA. He even went so far as to change the rating system that had been in place for years so that no one could question his decisions. Referees were no longer privy to their rating on the staff. It’s like Rush thought he could control and convince anyone of anything. Eventually, his bullshit caught up with him and he was replaced.

For some reason, the NBA refused to hire experienced former referees like Hue Hollins and Mike Mathis as group supervisors. Both were veteran referees who had worked the NBA Finals—they were very talented and would have been tremendous supervisors. Instead, the NBA turned to average, substandard, and low-achieving former referees who had nothing to offer the referees they would be supervising. The guys they hired merely filled their positions, beholden to the NBA for giving them a job and more than willing to do the front office’s bidding when a message had to be delivered to the rank-and-file referees.

By 2003, Ed T. Rush was out as Supervisor of Officials. After that, Rush’s job went to Ronnie Nunn. I remember standing in line with Nunn when the NBA started the drug-testing program for referees back in the 1990s. He hadn’t read the information packet the league sent out and was in a panic over the test. He told me about how he took walks in the woods with his buddies during the summer and smoked weed to help him relax. Nunn asked me, “How long does it stay in your system?”

I laughed. “Do I look like a doctor?” I said.

Mark Wunderlich, one of the other referees, used to joke that Nunn was lifelong buddies with Cheech and Chong.

The group supervisors were one step below the supervisor position. Their job was to watch the game and “observe” our performance. For the 2006-07 season, we had four group supervisors: Jim Wishmier, Mike Lauerman, Tommy Nunez Sr., and Jim Capers Sr. (Every once in a while, Joe Borgia, who was in charge of training and development, would also show up to observe a game.)

I was totally amazed that these five guys were chosen as supervisors. Wishmier and Lauerman were both fired during their referee careers. Tony Brothers, a referee who was hired around the same time I was, once told Stu Jackson, “It’s no big deal getting fired from this job, because I can always come back and be a supervisor!” A truer statement has never been spoken. I can’t think of any other business where you can get fired and come back as a boss.

Nunez had a 30-year career, but many of the refs knew he wasn’t meant for a management position, and he sure as hell couldn’t train officials. Talk about a guy who liked the action—Nunez had been going to casinos for 25 years and could barely pass a corner market without buying a lottery ticket. The people in the NBA office knew about his hobby, but as usual, they closed their eyes and kept paying lip service to the idea that there were no gamblers in the league. Nunez never stopped talking about the slots and blackjack tables. And we were supposed to take direction from him? The only thing he could give me direction on was how to play craps at the casino. He even went so far as to tell us that he had connections for free rooms in Vegas if we ever needed them.