I have been officiating now for a few years and reading this board for a while. I had never worked with or observed the arrogant officials that are sometimes mentioned on this board - until today.

My son's regular coach was out of town so I agreed to coach his team for a tournament. During the game a player from the opposing team gets the ball in the lane and loses his balance. One foot was in the air and he took a little hop with the other. An obvious travel from my angle. I asked the official about it and he said the pivot foot didn't move. I said I guess we just had different angles on the play then. Fine, play on. As the game progresses the fans start to make comments. Nothing personal or vulgar just little things we all hear from fans. After every call against my team he starts putting his hand up to his ear like he's listening for comments. After he tired of this he informs me that he will call a bench technical if the comments continue. I didn't even know most of the people in the stands. The game ended up going into three overtimes. Tie game. My team in the bonus. Four seconds left in the second overtime period. My team in bounds and is dribbling up the sideline. My player gets three dribbles across the half line and gathers himself to shoot. Defensive kid comes up and initiates enough contact to knock my player down. No call. The crowd goes wild. I ask why no call? Official says "I'm not going to decide the game on a play like that, the players are going to decide the game". I shake my head in disbelief and turn away. I have finally met one of those nameless arrogant officials that coaches on this board complain about.

Actually, he probably does have a name.

I thought of a few I would have liked to use but thought the better of it. My wife would kill me if my son heard me use that language.

Never ascribe to malice that which can be adequately explained by incompetence. :D

Exactly my thought, Ray. You just said it more concisely than I could.

Useless factoid
This quote attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte...

My apologies to the little tyrant for not attributing the quote to him. ;)

That's terrible, that means he knew there was a foul, but he just didn't want to call it. Instead of being yelled at by your fans, the other teams fans are going to yell at you. You can't lose there.

Calling big calls are fun, you shouldn't really change your calls too much from the first quarter to the fourth quarter, nor from the first week to the championship game.

It sounds to me like the player on the other team did decide, he tried to put your player on the free throw line.

Brian, glad to have another St. Louis official on here.

Coach, I gotta believe that's not the kind of ref you'll find here. Those guys are 1 in 10,000 and they make the rest of us look bad. I don't know a single official that would put his hand by his ear as if taunting the crowd to complain. If I ever see one of my peers act like that, you'd best believe I'm going to say something to him/her.

Also, I'd like to say that it's possible we don't have 100% of the story here.

Did you have a chance to have a "referee" coversation with him afterwards?(You know what I mean by referee conversation right?)
I don't know how it would have been received and you know it would not have done any good at that point but the official might have gained some perspective.
AAR

What level of ball was this? I'm asking because that could be a factor in how the game was officiated. I'm sure I come off as much more arrogant when I do lower level ball because I'm not putting up with any crap at that level. I'm sure you, as an official, were fine on the sidelines and respectful when you asked questions. What about the other coaches this guy had to deal with? How sportsmanship had been throughout the day? Being consistent in lower level basketball is probably the hardest thing to do as an official. Everyone knows you can't call everything. I'm not defending the guy, just giving some suggestions as to why he acted this way.

HEY - I was just having a bad day, OK!?!?!?!?!?!?!?

Maybe he thought he heard his phone ringing. :)

Maybe he was hoping the voices would talk to him some more? :rolleyes:

Of course we don't have 100% of the story, just my half.
Now as I said in my original post I am not a full time coach just filling in. I much prefer officiating to coaching as I find it easier. Maybe the guy was having a bad day, is unfulfilled at work, going through a divorce, etc. My only point was that it was the first time I had actually seen an official with such an arrogant disposition and I now have some understanding of what some coaches are complaining about.