Soft calls hurting basketball in the province.
By Jason Pike.
ST JOHN’S, NL – Contrary to what you may believe basketball is a contact sport. Well, maybe not here in Newfoundland. Over the past 5 years Newfoundland based teams travel more consistently than ever, to Toronto and Montreal primarily, and the one thing that is blatantly clear is that Newfoundland based referees are soft and to put it lightly inconsistent and just not up to the task.
To further add to my point, when the St. John’s Edge debuted basketball here and fans could watch the game played up close and personal sitting court side we got to see how physical the game truly is and the way it is supposed to be played.
This is the case everywhere except here and that’s why certain Academies in the club basketball scene are particularly training in a more physical style to proper prepare them for competitions off island. The difficult thing with that is you have to learn to turn that switch on and off because the officiating here is brutal and the fact of the matter is that if you are in close proximity to another player even if you don’t touch them, you’re getting called for a foul.
If you stuff another player and it’s clean you’re getting called for a foul, so it’s a bit of a double-edged sword when you’re training players here to play the way that the rest of the world plays or at least the rest of the country plays. Like a large number of other things here in Newfoundland we are 20 years behind everyone else.
Officiating
Another big issue is that you can’t even have a civil discussion with an official anymore because the first thing they do is T you up with a foul. It’s become common practice now and particularly more so this year it seems that technical fouls are handed out pretty freely without any real just cause. You can question a referees decision making process without it being a technical foul as long as you do it in a polite manner. You do have that right, but not in the eyes of the officials. It’s common practice now that these soft techs are a part of the game.
Unfortunately this has largely sucked the joy out of the game for a lot of young players because you can’t even celebrate a victory or a scored point at all anymore it seems because they will give you a technical for excessive celebrating. In what world does that make sense? If you take the fun out of the game what’s the point anymore? This isn’t the military, this is youth sports. Of course they want to celebrate, they want to express their Joy in the competition, in the victory over there competitors.
Sucking the joy
Yes, I do understand that excessive celebration and shoving it in another player’s face is ground for an unsportsmanlike technical but in one instance at the St Kevin’s Winter Classic this past weekend I witnessed one particular young official who has no lack of experience in the game, give two separate technical fouls for a Holy Spirit Falcons player yelling out “let’s go” as he scored a crucial basket that garnered him an And 1,as he was fouled on the play for his team.
He wasn’t directing it towards another player, he wasn’t showboating in anyone’s face, he was just pleased with himself and hyped and showing it with his fellow teammates, but that joy was quickly stomped out with a technical foul called on him.
This is just one of many similar incidents in the last several weeks that I myself have witnessed and having engaged in conversations with other witnesses, players, and coaches who are quickly becoming fed up with this type of play. It really does take away from the game.
One thing I also have noticed here in the province is that the officials seem to feel that it’s necessary for them to be actually a part of the game when they need to be “apart” from the game. They are not the players they are not involved in the competition they are supposed to be an impartial judge who stands outside of the game and enforces the rules but all too often they seem to become too personally involved and that is not the job of an official.
Is this a new thing? No, it’s a learned behavior from older officials and for the most part they are outside the realm of punishment, they are pretty much untouchable you might say.
Who watches the watchmen?
So the question is who watches the watchmen? The NLBAOC, the Newfoundland and Labrador Basketball Association officials committee, are supposed to be the oversight group for such things but in recent history I have yet to see any official reprimanded in any way for their actions.
I often question if some of the officials have stuck around the game too long and if they now only engage in games for the paycheck and not for any other reason.
For instance last year I watched a game that was being filmed the referee was out of position and didn’t really pay attention to the play and a Mobile Monarchs player stepped out of a scrum after a jump ball situation and from a distance of about two feet away launched the ball at a Queen Elizabeth players face busting his nose up, and when the tech was handed out to the Mobile player, the injured player clap his hands. Then the same official then gave him a technical foul and when he questioned the ref as to why the referee then proceeded with a double technical foul and ejected him from the game!
Now you have this player, that was viciously assaulted intentionally and still bleeding but he ended up being the one ejected from the game. Complaints were filed against said referee, video evidence was shown and what was the consequences and end result of the situation? Absolutely nothing. He finished the tournament and continued to ref consistently since then.
Turning people off playing
But these are just a couple incidents that stick out in my mind and witnessed dozens more. The problem with all of this is that it just turns people off from wanting to play. When you suck the joy out of something who wants to participate in that type of negative atmosphere. When you have to always be on edge you aren’t playing you’re 100% best.
You would never witness that soft type of refereeing in other sports such as hockey for example.
The question is how do we resolve these issues? Do we need better training from other officials outside of the province? Because it seems that we aren’t capable of a certain level of training here or are the ones providing the training are a part of the problem. Just passing on the same poor judgment to new up and coming referees.
I understand that you can’t make everyone happy all of the time. I get that there’s always going to be someone that complains but in a day and age where it’s no longer about he said she said because there is a cell phone or a camera and everybody’s hands nowadays that can 100% verify most complaints. There can no longer be those soft excuses and somebody needs to be enforcing the accountability of officials especially considering that people are paying for this service.
It’s comparable to any other aspect of life, in any other job in life. If you go to a restaurant and you order food and the person making the food ,that you’re paying for, under cooks your food then they’re probably going to face repercussions for that if it’s done repeatedly.
So you see where I’m trying to come from here, Maybe there needs to be more stringent observation over our officials. Something needs to change and improve.
