NBA Ref Schedule

[Jay R]

Originally Posted by Victor74

In simplistic terms here is how the NBA schedules it's officials.

Out of the 60 officials, about a third of them are crew chiefs. They are broken down into "teams" of 15 with a supervisor, but that mostly is for development and evaluating more than scheduling. In other words, it isn't just 15 officials in a group that are scheduled for games. An official can be on a crew with any other official outside of his group.

Crews no longer stay together for long periods of time. In the past, a crew of three could work a week with each other whereas now that isn't as common an occurrance.

Generally speaking, officials tend to stay within a region. So Sunday they work in Detroit, then Monday in Milwaukee. Wednesday they may be in Indiana and Thursday in Chicago. That doesn't mean that they can't go cross country if it becomes necessary. Nor does it mean they stay in that region.

Officials cannot work more than two consecutive days. Officials cannot officiate in the same arena within 15 days. Officials cannot work the same team more than 9 times in the year (regular season).

Crews are set up before the season, though most officials will work with every other official (save for a Dan Crawford working with Joe Crawford).

The trend is to try to assemble the best crews and work to their strengths and improve upon their weaknesses. So a crew will have a seasoned veteran crew chief, experienced official and rookie for example. The better the official, the more games scheduled. The weaker the crew chief is, the more games he'll work under a more experienced crew chief.

I am by no means an expert, but have a couple years of understanding and tendencies as I myself (as an odd hobby) "schedule" the officials. Feel free to send me a private message if have any more questions

I would disagree when you say that most officials will work with every other official. Crew chiefs don't work with crew chiefs except in the playoffs. Maybe rarely in a regular season game will two CC's be on the same game.