First of all, there are sooooo many basketball officials. I got my first varsity football assignment during my rookie year. I had multiple baseball/softball assignors working me 2-3 sets of games per day. My first year of basketball, I was lucky to get a game each week. There just are not as many officials working in most other sports. That means more people talking.
Second, the nature of basketball, with 10 players playing vigorously within a small, confined area means you get a lot of interesting and unusual situations, bang-bang plays, etc. There are a lot more things to discuss here than in many other sports. You have to render so many decisions every game on things that happen so quickly, that you have to talk and think about a lot of "stuff" just to be prepared to get the call right when it happens to you.
Third, the nature of basketball officiating is much more competitive than other sports. There are so many officials chasing so few spots in the "higher up" leagues that there is a tremendous amount of discussion, activity and effort put into analyzing anything and everything related to the game. Everybody is looking for that little edge that will get them noticed. Look at the inane holy wars that break out about such seemingly insignificant subjects as patent leather v. polished shoes, pleated v. regular pants, belt v. beltless, etc. Such trivial concerns matter in basketball officiating, but wouldn't if there were fewer officials.
Fourth, there are so many basketball officials coming and going all the time. So we end up having the same discussions over and over and over again. How many backcourt violation questions have we fielded this year? How many self-pass questions? Every time somebody new asks a backcourt question, there are many more people who are listening to the discussion, learning along with them. Those people then ask even more questions that have been asked before. A liner increase in the number of officials translates to an exponential increase in the amount of communication that must take place.
Fifth, we're so darned long winded! And sometimes we have to be. Nobody can agree on the definition of anything. So sometimes we go on for a page just trying to decide what it is we're talking about.
Sixth, there are so many grey areas to argue about. Want to start a fight in a group of officials, ask them what to do about any situation with 2.8 seconds left on the clock
Seventh, why wouldn't we? It's fun
Eight, did I mention we're sometimes long-winded?
[Edited by Back In The Saddle on Mar 3rd, 2005 at 06:58 PM]