Monday, February 27, 2006

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 :-)

Exhibition game tonight

Last night a referee buddy of mine called and asked if I would like to work a friendly match between two (almost) local teams with him. Of course I was all for it. :-) (you can never have enough practice as a ref)

The game is scheduled for tonight, 8 pm. I hope I will be able to write a couple of lines afterwards to let you guys know what has been going on.

Teams: Men, 3rd and 4th division - mostly amateurs, who practice about 4 days per week
History: I had one of those teams in a cup game last week, which they won.
Goals:
  • Good teamwork - My partner for tonight is a referee in our 4th division, which means he knows one team very well, but has to adjust to the style of play he'll see from the other (faster, more physical, higher skill level).
  • Take it seriously all the time - It is a game that should be easy to manage. But even though it is by far not as challenging as the games I usually ref on the weekends, it's still on a high enough level to cause us serious problems if we don't bring full concentration and respect for both teams. Point is, while I don't have any problems taking this seriously, it will be a challenge to get to that level of emotional arousal, where I'll have 100% concentration and be able to work a good game. (Do you guys know about the inverted U that describes the relationship between emotional arousal and performance?)
  • Good communication with players and coaches - When you call games on a lower level than usually, you tend to show players and coaches that you dont't want blabla all the time, that they should just live with your decisions, and so on. Because the feeling of superiority creeps in (something to the tunes of "I ref where you guy will never play/coach ... so would you please shut up!"), it leads to harsh reactions (warnings and T's) where players or coaches just don't understand the things you do. The ref seems to be unapproachable, which is never a good thing! I don't want that tonight :-)
  • Practice to sell tough calls - You can't really experiment as a referee in a regular game. What if it goes wrong? It might affect your performance in a game that actually means something. So I will do that tonight: offensive fouls, hard contacts, weak-side calls where nobody else, but the involved players, knows what happened (because they were watching the ball). More dynamic signals, better body language!
  • Get a copy of the game tape from the home team.

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Recap, Saturday, February 25, 2006

I'm back from tonight's game, which was fun. I'm glad I can take off my suit, tie, and shirt now and finally wear something more comfortable :-)

But back to the game ... it was a close game right from the start and in the end the home team pulled out a win (86-81). I wouldn't say it was a nice game, because both teams put up a good fight and tried very hard, but sometimes they just forgot to play the game the way it is supposed to be played. And besides, we had a totally different game in the second half than in the first ...

In the first half the game was very intense, with lots of handchecking, pushing, all those little things you don't like to see as a ref. We didn't want to interrupt the flow of the game more often than absolutely necessary, though. So we let them get away with most of it. The advantage / disadvantage rule was on full display, but from my point of view it could have been a better game if we've had a couple more calls. Anyway, even though I thought something was wrong, we didn't get much criticism from coaches and players. And when they needed to talk, we sorted it out quickly. At least we communicated pretty well, with each other, and and with everybody else. The first quarter ended with 10 fouls called against the home team and 4 against the visitors. In the second quarter it was the other way around, 4 home - 8 guests. Actually a lot of fouls, but I think at this point nobody really knew what would be called tonight. There was no consistency, from my point of view.

During the break my partner and I talked about it. I told him what my feeling was. That we should make clear where our line was, that we needed to concentrate more, and get in better position to be able to react to all that handchecking, reaching, grabbing. He agreed and off we were to the second half.

But now, something strange happened. We had not blown our whistles yet, when it was clear that something had changed. Both teams started to PLAY basketball. It didn't look like hard work anymore. They shared the ball more and executed on the offensive end. It was still a good fight, but with more finesse and slightly less fouls. Still, neither team was able to build a comfortable lead. So we had to stay focused, and we did. Now, everything went smoothly. We had good weak-side coverage with off-the-ball fouls (moving screens, grabbing), and everybody seemed to understand what we were doing. Even tough calls like a moving screen as a fifth personal didn't produce the reactions you would usually get under such circumstances. Communication and mechanics were nearly perfect, we just clicked. It was very close to that perfect game you are always looking for. When the buzzer sounded everybody shook our hands, said "thank you" and wished us a safe trip home (while that doesn't seem to be so special, sometimes the losing team forgets about politeness, right?).

After a long hot shower we got in the car and back on the road. On the freeway we stopped at McDonalds, where we didn't only get something to eat (burgers, chicken mcnuggets, french fries, large milk shakes and coffee), but also exchanged feedback. I think I impressed my partner, because I had told him earlier about my goals for the game (which I set for myself for every single game) and now I was taking notes while he gave me his feedback. He is a veteran in that league and told me that he didn't know anybody in our league with a more professional attitude. That was a great compliment. I mean, he has been there for so many years, while I started reffing there only a bit more than a year ago.

But back to the game itself. Of course we talked about the "two different games" we had just witnessed, and we found out that we didn't approach the first half with the same intention. While I wanted to draw the line from the beginning, so everybody could adjust to it, he wanted to let them play, until the offensive players would react to the contacts from the defense (i.e. show that they are not happy with it). At certain points in the first half I had the impression that he was maybe not really concentrated and focused and missed a call here or there, while he thought that I was very hard on some of the players without any actual reason to do so. Interesting, isn't it? But I need to say we are talking about nuances here, I don't even think anybody noticed what was going on ... Then, after our little halftime chat we were on exactly the same page for the rest of the game. Now, that's communication. He described it as him taking 2 small steps in my direction while I took 1 in his :-)

I then asked him to tell me if he noticed something I could improve on, in his opinion. And here is what he said:
"You could sell some of your calls better. Use more dynamic signals. Call it and sell it with authority, especially if it is a very close call. If the situation is emotional (e.g. very hard foul) look the player straight in the eyes for a second, or two, while holding your fist up." That was a really good observation, especially because he was not the first one to tell me ... I have to work on that!
Then he told me that he really enjoyed working with me, which is always nice to hear. What he liked most was that the TEAM was alway first. No I and YOU, only WE! And he said he was impressed how calm and concentrated I was, no matter what (I told you the home fans are not exactly fine sportsmen. Now, add beer to this and you know what we got to hear during the game ;-))

Now, remember my list of goals?
  • Stay concentrated and calm regardless of the circumstances (distractions from fans). - Yepp, I think I did that.
  • Feeling for the game (adjust to their skill level, advantage/disadvantage) - Take a split second to watch a play unfold before calling a foul or letting it go. - That didn't work all that well in the first half, but almost perfect in the second.
  • Good communication with partner and scorers table. - We had very good communication with each other.
  • Even better communication with players and coaches - Be nice, but firm. No bull****. - It worked. Lots of little Q&As, a couple of jokes, almost no discussions. Much preventive officiating using my voice (number 11, seconds / watch your hands / don't grab / keep your elbows down / whatever). Used the "stop it now or you get that big ugly T" signal twice (once for a player, once for a coach). After that only needed to look the player in the eyes to shut him up.
  • Remember three stages in managing conflict - Try to get them back on the same page. Give the stop signal. T - We didn't get to stage 3 :-)
Altogether, I think we did a pretty good job, better than average. Even the first half was not THAT bad. Because as I already said, players and coaches could live with it and played through it. The game was never on the brink of getting out of control! It was just not SO smooth.

I hope you enjoyed reading. Feel free to comment everything or discuss certain situations. I'll be glad to answer any question you might have :-)

Next games: Saturday, March 4 and Sunday, March 5. Both games are mens in the same league as tonight's game. I will rent a car for that weekend and drive about 800 miles to get to the games and back home. I'll spend Saturday night away from home, away from my family ... :-(

I hate these weekends, but I love these games!

Friday, February 24, 2006

Preview for Saturday, February 25, 2006

The upcoming game is between the 3rd (15-5) and 10th (9-11) ranked teams in a men's semi-professional league. The visiting team owns the better record and was particularly successful on the road, winning 7 out of 9. On the other side, the home team is significantly stronger when they play at home than when playing in away games (6-4 compared to 3-7). That said, I can't make any predictions regarding the outcome of that game.

I don't know much about either one of the teams. Both teams seem to be well coached. From my experience in the past I recall the home fans to be a pain in the neck. Especially in a close game this could be entertaining ...

For the refereeing part I can say that I will work with a veteran partner who has more than 10 years of experience on that level and is very consistent. We know each other fairly well from games we had together in the past and it has always been a good team performance. Therefore I am pretty optimistic that we will enjoy the game and the 3 hours in the car prior to and after the game :-)

Points of emphasis for this game:
  • Stay concentrated and calm regardless of the circumstances (distractions from fans).
  • Feeling for the game (adjust to their skill level, advantage/disadvantage) - Take a split second to watch a play unfold before calling a foul or letting it go.
  • Good communication with partner and scorers table.
  • Even better communication with players and coaches - Be nice, but firm. No bull****.
  • Remember three stages in managing conflict - Try to get them back on the same page. Give the stop signal. T
Ok, I'll update again after that game and tell you what happened.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Welcome to my blog!

Welcome to "First Talk, Then T". This blog is about officiating basketball games.

I am a referee from Europe, and I ref games on a professional level. We use 2 and 3 men mechanics, depending on the league we work for, but it's always FIBA rules and mechanics.

Why did I come up with just another blog? First of all, I love to read about other referee's experiences and there was not much in this regard on the internet. Google doesn't find any blogs from officials for officials and everybody else who is just interested. Reading an officiating forum I came across that guy bloggingref's profile and his blog "Illegal Screen". I enjoyed reading his accounts of games he had and other stuff related to officiating. But what really got me going was the possibility of having my own game log. That's something I wanted to do forever. Keep track of my games, with self evaluation and feedback from others, highlights and stuff ... so the best part of "Illegal Screen" was his game log with "things to work on", "things I did well" and "next". So, expect to find something similiar here :-)

In addition to a game log I plan to post different stuff about referee training, philosophy of officiating, books I read about. Basically, everything that I come across and that has something to do with refereeing. Because this is what I love!

So, make sure you come back to see what's new :-)

Yours,
BBallRef


PS: You may have noticed already, but English is not my native language. I appologize for any mistakes you may find. Please, let me know about them (maybe not all of them, though), especially if there is anything that could be misunderstood. I'll then happily correct my post.

PPS: Feel free to link to this blog, share your thoughts (comment on my posts), or drop me an email.