Wanted, Reward, Dead Or Alive ...

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by SC Official

... the crew concept in basketball ...

When in Rome ...

One of the things I like about officiating is the collegiality. With 325 guys on my local board, I seldom work with the same official more than once per season, but over a period of almost forty years I have worked a dozen times, or more, with many of them. I also work with guys that I've never worked with before. I enjoy both catching up with the veterans (kids out of college, how's the new job, how many grandchildren), and getting to know newer guys (what do you do for a living). In regard to the social aspect of officiating (important to a retired, divorced guy like myself who lives alone with his cat), it's never boring here in my little corner of Connecticut. With my recent orthopedic problems, I'm probably just a few years away from not actively working games, and I'm sure that I will miss the social aspect of officiating more than anything else.

When I work with a veteran whom I haven't worked with in a while, and they say, "It's been a few years", I usually reply, "That's because I told our assigner that I didn't want to work with you anymore". Yeah, our local veterans have "chain yanking" down to a science. That's what makes it so much fun. Yeah, the money's good, the game's challenging, but the fun is the best part of officiating for me. After all, basketball is still just a game, and games are supposed to be fun.