Let's talk about a professional attitude
Tonight's game was easy to referee, just as I expected. It was lopsided, a 40+ point win for the home team, and in the true sense of the word a friendly match. My partner and I had fun together and I was really pleased with our performance. So, for 4 quarters everything was just fine.Then both teams decided to play 10 additional minutes, it was still early, because so far we had not needed to interrupt the game too often. Bad idea ...
In the post I wrote today in the morning I already touched the topic of the optimal emotional arousal for peak performances. Now imagine, you have had a good game, you are concentrated, may be you experience something like the flow phenomenon. Then you see the clock running down, 5 seconds left, 4, 3, 2, 1, .... the buzzer. Everything falls of, you switch to relax mode, start to realize that you are tired (the game was up-tempo style for 40 minutes), go to the bench to shake some hands. And there you here the coach say "Let's play one more quarter." Ok, you don't want to be the kill-joy tonight, so you agree: "Let's go then." And that's where the fun part ended. Now it's all sloppy play, with a lot of contact, nothing really bad, but annoying none the less. Frustration over missed layups mixes with frustration over missed calls (it's not that easy to switch back from relax mode to game mode) ... there is a T. It calms things down for the rest of the game, but still you hear stupid comments all over the place. The best coming from the home team's coach: "Let's just hope they'll never have to call a game on a higher level."What the hell?!?!
Remeber, we had a very good game. Both teams enjoyed it and were able to do whatever they wanted to practice for the next weekend. Everybody should have gone home happy and content. But nope, here it is ... disrespect from a coach who has been doing this for 25 years, longer than my partner has been enjoying his life so far. Wouldn't you expect a coach to say "Thank you guys for coming here and helping us out." Wouldn't you think he would shake your hand after the game? And that you wouldn't have to look for him and wait 15 more minutes after you took a shower to get paid? Does he think about his or his team's reputation? I don't know ...
My girlfriend just asked me, why I even agreed to referee another quarter. She said that she couldn't imagine an older colleague of mine (from the professional level, where I ref most of my games and where I am one of the youngest refs) to do this. They probably would have said "We talked about a regular basketball game ... the score is not tied, game is over. Of course, you can play as long as you want, but I'm not going to referee." I said I did it for the love of the game, even though I knew that everybody's concentration was already down. And that's what I got. I didn't tell the coach, who obviously didn't know me, how stupid his comment was. I thought I didn't need to prove anything, and that he just revealed how little he knew about refereeing ... You see, I was really fuming when I left. He just spoiled this evening for me! I have to go to bed and meditate it away ;-)
Good night, everybody!
PS: I think, if something like that ever happens again, I will hand the coach my whistle and leave without saying another word :-)
posted by BBallRef @ 2/27/2006 11:14:00 PM
3 Comments:
I'd have left. For one thing, I'd worry about liability for injury in the friendly fifth quarter. For another...well, what's to prevent a sixth? seventh? They can play if they want, but my job is done.
I don't think liability is an issue for referees over here. Everything is covered by the club's and federation's insurances ... and that has nothing to do with the character of a game (championship, practice, exhibition ...). Could you, as a referee in the States, be held accountable for a player's injury when you agree to referee for 10 more minutes? From my (legal) point of view nothing had changed. It was still a friendly scrimmage between two club teams during practice time of one of the teams. I was only worried about the "emotional" consequences ...
They could sue. Would they win? Probably not, but I don't want to go there.
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