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	Quelle: sportingnews.com / Autor: Sean Deveney / Original: Throwin' Elbows: Why do refs have to be so macho? March 14, 2003
	Warum müssen die NBA-Refs solche Machos sein?
	Sean Deveney Sporting News I've done my best to be level-headed and fair when it comes to NBA refs. They've got a tough job, I know, one that could involve a whistle on every play if the game were called by the letter of NBA law. Thank goodness it's not. I've repeatedly defended refs against the assaults of fans in my email box. But I'm fed up. I can accept some aspects of bad officiating as just part of the game. Good teams tend to get more calls than bad teams; star players get calls that most Joe Schmos don't. That's fine -- that tendency transcends basketball. Inconsistency, missed calls, even personal vendettas, I can understand. These are human elements of sports, and we'll never fully remove them from our games (nor should we). But my problem with NBA refs these days is this: tight shirts. These guys (with due respect to Violet Palmer, who is not a guy but is one of the better refs in the game) are allowed to wear shirts that are two sizes too small, presumably to put on display whatever pec and triceps work they put in that morning. Serious, some refs seem to have come out of the Charles Atlas School of Officiating. I loved what Michael Jordan said at the All-Star game this year: "These guys wear the small, tight T-shirts and look like they want to be dominant. It's spoiled brats arguing with guys who want to be macho and want to be part of the picture, and they're not." Macho, that's the perfect word to sum up the problems of current NBA refs. When did officiating a game become a stage for flaunting your manhood? An example comes from the Milwaukee-Golden State game I was sitting at last Saturday, one of the more exciting games I've seen this year. In the first half, Troy Murphy drove the lane and missed a layup attempt, mostly because he was whacked by Anthony Mason. No call. Murphy, upset, punched his fist into the air and shouted, "Come on!" Meanwhile, the Bucks were moving the ball upcourt, with Murphy still lagging well behind the play. Now, here is what bothers me -- while the play was moving, Steve Javie, the trail official on the play, began moving upcourt, but completely paid no attention to the action. Instead, he was staring at Murphy, just waiting for him to do something worthy of a technical foul. I mean, the guy was not even looking at the play right in front of him. He was daring Murphy to give him a reason to pop a T. It was pathetic. It was "macho." I think the first thing the league should do, besides making refs wear clothes that fit, is go back to two referees. The idea for three refs, which was resurrected in 1988, has passed its prime. The reasons were to reduce the strain on older refs, officiate off-the-ball play better and reduce violence. Well, refs who can't handle being part of a two-person team probably should not be on the job, anyway. Off-the-ball officiating is no better now than it was 15 years ago -- in fact, it might be worse. There are more calls being made that have no consequence on the play at hand, or that come at the behest of a bench that continually shouts, "Three seconds!" in the ear of a ref. "Sometimes when you have three whistles, everybody wants to get into the act and it slows the game down," says former Suns coach Cotton Fitzsimmons. "It seems like everyone wants to blow a whistle. Let the players play the game." As for violence, the league has done a good job of curtailing that, but it has nothing to do with having a third ref -- it instead has to do with tough rules and fines for flagrant fouls that make players think twice about getting involved in a fracas. The third ref is not what keeps players from coming onto the court during a scuffle -- it's the one-game automatic suspension. If there is going to be violence in a game, it will happen whether there are two refs, or 12 refs. Going back to two refs is not going to solve everything of course, but for starters, it allows the league to give the pink slip to two-thirds of the worst refs on the floor now. Clearly, just having three sets of eyes on the court is not the solution -- we'd be much better off with two sets of good, fair eyes. And looser shirts, of course. . . .