BAD CALLS LOST OUR GAME! Need for change!

[Hawks Coach]

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Originally posted by star_01 on 01-23-2000 04:13 PM
I'm sorry if I offend any of you. There are some very good refs out there, but some are just bad. Yesterday I had a basketball game. The refs were horrible! They called traveling on me when I made a basket. I watched the tape over and over again in slow motion and it wasn't traveling. And my friend took and awesome charge and they called bloking on her! She was set and didn't lean into at all! They wouldn't call fouls on the other team when we were shooting and they called a foul on me on a jump ball. And what really screwed us over was that they wouldn't give us a time out in the final seconds when they should have. My coach was so mad and my friend even cried. I tried so hard in that game and it went for nothing because two dumb refs couldn't call a fair game. To you, a game is you go out blow your whistle at times and go home. To us, the players, basketball games are what we look forward to. They are what we practice for 3 hours after school everyday for. And it is not fair for someone to blow a game for us that isn't even on our team. I am not making excuses for my teams mistakes but I think that it is a refs job to call a fair game. Is that too much to ask for?

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Star
I hope that all of these referees' replies have helped to change your perspective a bit. But perhaps you would prefer a different perspective - that of a coach. I have coached a couple hundred games over many years in several sports, and have had numerous calls go against me. I have also found myself letting out sighs of relief when my center with four fouls gets away with an outrageous hack while blocking a layup. I even pull my players aside and let them know about the violation that they committed that was missed by the referee, so they won't do it again and get it called.

The calls go both ways, even though I always think I lost more than I got (and so does that guy on the other bench). I have seen good refs and bad. I contact my league regarding both (and your coach should do the same), although I observe referees in more than one game before reporting their transgressions. I know that I wouldn't want a single ugly game that one of my teams played or that I coached to cause someone to think my players were all horrible or that i am somehow unfit to coach.

I also do not let a couple of judgement calls affect my asessment of a referee's performance. You need to ask yourself if they were consistent in what they called, in control of the game, allowed play to flow, alert and attentive, in position to make the right calls, aware of game situations, anticipating what players and coaches may do next (e.g., calling timeout when surprised by a press). That is what I look for in measuring how referees are performing, not whether or not I got every call I wanted (I don't think I ever have or ever will!).

My teams have never lost games because of referee calls, although we have had some stinkers at crunch time. I tell my players not to put the game in the hands of the referees, but to win in or lose it themselves. If we establish our game from the beginning and adapt to the flow of the game (including the way it is being called), then we aren't desperately looking for a foul call with 2 seconds to play to bail us out, or wishing we hadn't gotten the phantom hack called on our center as time expired. No, we are up by 10-20 points and cruising on autopilot to victory.

If we play a perfect game, one in which all of our players make the right decisions on and off the ball, on offense and on defense, we can then critique the referees' performance. Won't ever happen.