Does anyone know if Sterns fined himself for the public comments he made regarding the performance of the officials?

Cuban did say anything worse than the commissioner...only problem is that Cuban isn't the commissioner and has a history. Fortuantely for Cuban a $200,000 fine is tip money.

that's a lot of money for many people! I guesss not for Mr. Cuban

Just a general thought.........I think that I might take Marky Mav a little more seriously if I ever see him get all upset at the officials when they make a bad call that goes in <b><i>favor</i></b> of his team. :)

IMO, even evaluators can biases. Exactly how do we determine who is a better official and who’s not? If we rank officials, how is this "ranking" system going to work? Since we know not all officials are guaranteed receive the same amount of games, those who get assigned more games MIGHT tend to do better than those who get less games. And even if they are given the same amt of games, not all game level are the same. Then what????? Given that this “ranking system” is for the NBA refs, game levels can still be very different in terms of posting psychological factors. Games that are televised on National TV might post more psychological stress for refs than games that are not televised publicly across the nation. How are we going to account these variables in the “ranking system?”

Another comment I have is that if they are constantly being evaluated, would officials be more concerned about their personal ratings vs. “teamwork within the crew?” After all, if they truly want to advance, they need to “make a name for themselves!” Given that, would that suggest doing less as a crew but more individually? Officiating a good game requires more than just one person doing his/her job, right? So if my partners failed on me, why should my ranking drop because of his/her mistake. I just don’t see how a ranking system would be fair for officials.

A difficulty with the ranking system, as well, would be if evaluators are giving higher ratings per game to more experienced officials due to a respect factor. If that's the case, then the year-end ranking would be higher because his/her average scores end up being better than a newer official.

I remember the first few years I was reffing and had evaluations at the same time as a 20+ year official. This individual could barely get up-and-down the court, had homemade signals and marginal calls yet was given a near perfect evaluation. Of course, none of the veteran officials in the NBA fall in this category, but I use it as it is illustrative of preferential evaluations for people who have been around for a while.

That being said, the NBA has the fairest and most stringent evaluation process around. The level of accountability is so high that if you're not doing well, then you'd better have another job waiting for you.

And who are you to say that isn't already being done? Have you seen the NBA officials rankings? Do you know for a fact that the highest rated officials aren't being used?

If you have 10 officials ranked 1-10, and numbers 4, 5, 10 are working the game, then - by definition - you DO NOT have the highest rated officials working the game.

Manwr1, every time the whistle blows in an NBA regular season game, the observer records that fact. Who blew the whistle, what type of action occurred, and notes whether a subsequent video review is need to verify the accuracy of the call. Additionally those plays which may be questionable where a whistle did not occur are noted and reviewed. I've been told by "those in the know", that the officials selected to officiate the playoffs are correct approx. 94% of the time. Either you're correct or you're not - not much bias to be concerned about here. While there is a baseline expectation of mechanics, the NBA is much more concerned with getting the call right than with proper mechanics.