NBA Finals Officials

[Victor74]

Originally Posted by actuary77

Thanks, Victor, for all your insights. Just curious... how do you come to your conclusions? Do you study the officials' stats, watch a lot of regular season games and mostly watch the officials and not the players, or others?

Interesting comment you had about Mott. I did not know he was a crew chief. Was Dick Bavetta even a crew chief at all during the regular season?

How about Violet Palmer? I believe she had a grand total of 1 first round playoff game this season.

This last one goes back a few years... remember Luis Grillo? I believe he was on the staff for almost 20 years but never worked playoffs. Do you know why?

I watch NBA games from the perspective of an official and at times do it to evaluate the officials. When it is said they are 98% accurate, that is the case. I am not a stat guy and when I rate an official, I don't always rely on stats. Some stats are important (accuracy rate would be one), but sometimes there are things that don't show on stats (demeanor) that go into making a great official.

Dick Bavetta was and remained a crew chief. Judging from his schedule, I very much think he is on his farewell tour. In Joe Forte's last year, he worked with every official and so did Bavetta this year. Matchups with other crew chiefs lead me to believe this. Bavetta did serve as crew chief in probably 1/3 his games this year though, so he didn't lose that status. But his ratings have gone down in recent years, evidenced by him not making into the Conference Finals.

Violet Palmer did officiate one playoff game and served as alternate in another this year. If I were asked to predict her future in ten years, she'll be in the same situation as Scott Wall, Derek Richardson or Kevin Fehr. That situation is occasionally making playoffs and no crew chief status.

Luis Grillo most likely made crew chief in his career due to one thing: seniority. That isn't how the NBA does things any longer; they now promote to crew chief and assign playoffs/Finals by performance. Grillo always came across to me as an average official. Average doesn't make it for playoffs. Like players, you have to be your best.

Finally, I think there are three kinds of crew chiefs. One is the excellent, experienced ones that consistently and constantly are crew chiefs. The second is the average crew chief, no matter how long they have been a crew chief they don't seem to improve or slow down either. These officials will occasionally work under the direction of another crew chief (and partially because of the number of games to schedule dictates this or they wouldn't work nearly as many games total). The third crew chief is the new crew chief. They'll be crew chiefs for a couple games and then go another stretch under the mentorship of the first group of crew chiefs. This crew chief is only a year term and then move onto the most appropriate other category, most likely the average crew chief.

Excellent: Joe and Dan Crawford, Monty McCutchen, Scott Foster, Derrick Stafford, Mike Callahan, Bill Kennedy, Greg Willard, Ken Mauer, Ed Malloy, Marc Davis, Bill Spooner, Jason Phillips, Eddie F Rush, Ron Garretson and Tom Washington
Average: Tony Brothers, Michael Smith, Zach Zarba, James Capers, Dick Bavetta and David Jones
New: Gary Zielinski, Rodney Mott, John Goble and Derrick Collins (last two having served as crew chief no more than 3 games)