Personal Foul. Tim Donaghy
the locker room, Darell Garretson wasn’t happy. He came down pretty hard on Matt Winick, who was in charge of assigning referees for the game. Garretson was furious that Winick had chosen such a weak crew for my debut. For the first few years, most young officials are paired with experienced refs, the type of guys who work the NBA Finals. That didn’t happen in my first game. We watched the game tape back at the hotel and league officials ultimately defended the call I made on Reggie Miller—but I am sure they wished I had called a foul on Olajuwon. That night, I was one of the lead stories on ESPN’s SportsCenter, featuring highlights of me standing on the court, debris flying all over the place. Not exactly how I envisioned my first game.
Later, someone on the NBA staff anonymously sent a football helmet to my house with a note that read, “You may need to wear this for the rest of your career!” Years later I watched the tape of the game with some other referees and we had a good laugh. At the time, however, it wasn’t very funny.
After that fiasco, I started settling into my new routine. On a typical game day, I would have breakfast and get in a workout. The grind of an 82-game schedule is difficult, and physical fitness is an absolute necessity. The referee crew would have a meeting at 11:00 AM and cover a number of topics, including a discussion of players and any problems in the past games between the two teams. We would also watch plays that the league office would send to us electronically to watch on a computer. For example, the league office might want us to watch different plays intended to illustrate what was considered a traveling violation, or we might receive a video demonstrating the difference between a blocking foul and a charge. Sometimes the league was concerned that we weren’t calling enough defensive three-second violations. If the refereeing staff was reticent about making a particular call, all the crews would get video of plays to review so that we would all know what to look for next time. We might hear from the league’s supervisors or other referees that, for instance, Kevin Garnett travels a lot when he’s in the post, or that Chris Webber moved his pivot foot in an obvious manner. This was done casually all year, but when the playoffs started the league office made a major issue of it and wanted us to blow the whistle and crack down on violations.
The tone in our pregame meetings was mostly professional, but that wasn’t always the case. Sometimes a referee might say something like, “I had this guy two or three weeks ago, and he’s a real asshole. If he starts this shit with me again tonight, I’m gonna get him.” Of course, it wasn’t only about which players or coaches we were going after. The flip side was talking about players or coaches we had to protect. Back when Lamar Odom was playing for the Miami Heat, longtime referee Dick Bavetta told me before a game, “The last time I had Miami, Odom had six fouls and the league emailed us and showed us that four or five of the fouls weren’t good calls. We’ve got to take care of him. I can’t have him think I’m fucking him two games in a row.” So I would make a mental note of that. I remember thinking, That’s strange—are we calling a game as we see it or choosing sides?
The pregame meeting lasted about 45 minutes, and then it was off to lunch. Afternoons were pure boredom. We did whatever we could to make the time pass quickly—go shopping, watch TV, go to the movies, or make phone calls.
As time passed, however, I began to realize that our job was more about refereeing specific players as opposed to uniformly enforcing the rules of the game. In other words, we were more concerned with who might be getting a foul and what point it was in the game, instead of just calling it like we saw it. I remember hearing comments from fans, coaches, and other referees along the lines of, “People don’t come to see Shaquille O’Neal, Charles Barkley, or Michael Jordan sit on the bench.” Our group supervisors would tell us the same thing, saying things like, “People paid $1,500 to sit courtside to see LeBron James or Kobe Bryant. Make sure if you blow the whistle on these guys, it’s an obvious foul.”
As a result, referees would huddle up during a game to make sure they were all on the same page. If Kobe Bryant had two fouls in the first or second quarter and went to the bench, one referee would tell the other two, “Kobe’s got two fouls. Let’s make sure that if we call a foul on him, it’s an obvious foul, because otherwise he’s gonna go back to the bench. If he is involved in a play where a foul is called, give the foul to another player.”
Similarly, when games got physically rough, we would huddle up and agree to tighten the game up. So we started calling fouls on guys who didn’t really matter—“ticky-tack” or “touch” fouls where one player just touched another but didn’t really impede his progress. Under regular circumstances these wouldn’t be fouls, but after a skirmish we wanted to regain control. We would never call these types of fouls on superstars, just on the average players who didn’t have star status. It was important to keep the stars on the floor.
I was so young and naïve when I was coming up. When I was a ref in the CBA, Aaron Wade told us that there were no superstars in the league—there was no particular player whom people came to see. Dr. Wade simply told us, “If you see it, you call it.” Darell Garretson would tell us the same thing during NBA training or rookie leagues. So that was the mind-set I had when I made it to the NBA.
It didn’t take long to realize that my approach to officiating didn’t match up with that of the veteran referees. Once I became part of the staff, I was slowly taught the craft of NBA officiating. The league continued to stress the new hand-checking rules and drummed it into our heads in pregame meetings: “Under no circumstances is a player allowed to put a hand on a ball handler who is beyond the free-throw line.” Throughout that season, I was blowing my whistle all the time—but I started to notice other referees weren’t.
“Why aren’t you guys calling hand checking?” I asked. “They were adamant about it in the meeting.”
“We’re not calling it unless the hand check actually impedes another player’s progress,” the veteran would say.
“But that’s not what they said in the meetings,” I would respond, surprised.
“If you want to survive in this league,” the veteran refs explained, “you’d better back off calling it.”
With that advice, I started to back off. As a new ref, I was obviously receiving mixed signals. The officials in the NBA front office were telling us to do one thing, but the older veteran refs weren’t complying. To fit in and “survive,” I simply did what the older refs did, no more questions asked. I was slowly learning that NBA referees had their own way of officiating a professional basketball game.
After working with veteran referees for several years, I was able to predict how certain referees would call a game. For example, I was at my brother Jim’s house for a birthday party when I was a young ref, and Dick Bavetta was officiating an NBA game on TV. “Watch,” I told my brother. “Anytime Bavetta referees, you’ll rarely see a blowout. When a team gets up by 20, he starts blowing the whistle like crazy.” And sure enough, that’s what happened—one team got way ahead before Bavetta whistled the other team back into contention.
By 1996, I had been in the league a couple of years, still trying to do things the right way. I’ll never forget a pivotal moment in a game in Philadelphia I was refereeing with Ed T. Rush. The 76ers’ opponent was the Chicago Bulls. That year, the league office showed us film of a particular spin move players were utilizing on the baseline. By rule, if the ball wasn’t out of the player’s hand before he lifted his pivot foot, he should be called for a traveling violation. The trailing ref was supposed to watch for that play because the other referee would be under the basket with an obstructed view. I was the trailing ref that night when Michael Jordan made that exact spin move on the baseline, and I called a travel. I waved off his basket and 20,000 people—presumably Philadelphia fans—started screaming at me. I couldn’t believe it.
A timeout was called and Jordan and Bulls coach Phil Jackson rushed over. Jordan was in shock. He wasn’t angry—just puzzled. His attitude seemed to be, it’s okay to call that violation, but don’t call it on me!
By the time Phil Jackson reached me, he had his hands in the air. “What are you doing?” he asked, stunned by the call.
“Phil,” I said, “that’s the travel they told