Boy dunks during halftime of girls game....

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by LRZ

If you are old enough and have been doing this long enough, you probably were schooled in an entirely different officiating philosophy than today's, which is dominated by automatics, required calls, limited discretion, and central office micromanaging. When I began, we were taught to apply common sense to the rules and mechanics, then allowed to use our judgment and discretion in maintaining good game management. Now, discretion is discouraged, and automatic calls of all sorts are mandated.

Now that I'm reaching the end of my officiating career I'm reminiscing about the guys I observed when I first started. The best guys back then (1980) didn't have perfect mechanics, couldn't figure their way through the proper rules for odd plays (correctable errors, etc.), and made up signals as they went along, but they could make the tough calls and fairly officiate and manage the game (there were some guys back then who could call a game and who had good mechanics, rule knowledge, and signals, some, but not many).

A long time hard ass coach (whose players, in three sports, would never say a disrespectful word to officials) recently passed away and was remembered at our last board meeting. An encounter was described between this coach and one of our old time veterans, who also since passed away. In the incident described the veteran just tossed the coach out of the game, no technical foul called, no free throws, he just tossed him out of the gym, and moved on with the game.

Today it's all about consistency, we can often be described as "robots". I'm all for consistency, it helps the game, but it has also taken much of the fun out of officiating basketball.