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Old Fri Aug 31, 2012, 04:13pm
Mark T. DeNucci, Sr. Mark T. DeNucci, Sr. is offline
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Join Date: Sep 1999
Location: Toledo, Ohio, U.S.A.
Posts: 8,119
I apologize in advance for the long post.

Yes I am a union man, I grew up in a union family and have been a member of three different unions during my adult life. That said, lets talk about the brother(and sister)hood of officiating.

Many here know my basketball officiating background and I can honestly say that if I were to retire today (and Mark, Jr., who has been officiating for five years now thought I stopped officiating six years ago) that I have had an officiating career that 90% of all basketball officials wish they could have had.

Whether one officiates only jr. high school and freshmen games or officiates in the NBA we are all basketball officials and we should not be doing anything that hurts our fellow brother and sister officials. Personally, I never had the desire to officiate in the NBA (maybe the WNBA) because I felt that the college level was the highest level that suited my temperament as a basketball official. That does that mean that I would have turned down an chance to officiate in the NBA if I had been offered a chance? Absolutely not, as long as it was as a member of the staff and not as a scab (yes, I used the word scab).

NBA officials are officials just like every other basketball official that officiates in this country, Canada, and else where in the world, and I am not about to take a job away from one of them just to feed my ego while they are trying to maintain or improve their working conditions.

Let me tell a true story:

A few years ago I assigned the officials for a men's 30 and over (with well over half the players being over 40) recreational league (all of the officials that I assigned were over 40 except Junior). As men's recreational leagues go, this one was fairly laid back. That is not to say that there weren't TF's called from time to time but there were never hard feelings by the players because they knew that we were there to maintain order.
At the end of the season the league had a tournament that took three weeks to crown a champion (the tournament was single elimination but only played once a week). During the first week of the tournament an official who posts in this forum (and no it was not me) tossed the League Director from the game after the LD chest bumped the official after receiving a TF from the official. The game was the last game of the night and the LD's team ended up losing the game by forfeit.
The LD called me that night screaming about being tossed from the game and the game being forfeited and that he was not going to pay the officials for the games that they had officiated that night. (The officials were paid by check every week by the school district that leased the gym to the league, it was the weirdest setup that I had ever seen but the checks always arrived in the mail on time and never bounced.)
And that since I was scheduled to officiate the next week he did not me to officiate because I was the one who had assigned the official who tossed him. I told him that I would gladly replace myself as long as I got paid and the officials for his game of the evening were paid too. He told me to go to heck. And I told him that he wasn't going to have any officials for the rest of the tournament.
I sent an email to all of the officials on my list informing them of what had happened. The LD called all of them on my list to have them finish the tournament, none of them (and there were 20 officials on the list) would take the games except two officials. Eighteen officials felt that it was more important to stand together against a LD that thought it was okay to make physical contact with a game official than it was to make a game fee which was $27 per game. I don't have any respect for the two official who put money before their fellow officials and when I am asked to assign officials for anything those two officials are not on my list.

MTD, Sr.
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Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.
Trumbull Co. (Warren, Ohio) Bkb. Off. Assn.
Wood Co. (Bowling Green, Ohio) Bkb. Off. Assn.
Ohio Assn. of Basketball Officials
International Assn. of Approved Bkb. Officials
Ohio High School Athletic Association
Toledo, Ohio