Back to Basics for Basketball - 5 Big Referee Ideas

My daughter just finished 3 years of club basketball, and so I watched a LOT of young, inexperienced basketball referees for the last few years on Saturday and Sunday tournaments all across the state.

I watched refs not show up at all, so I reffed several times in dress shoes and slacks - and got yelled at by parents of the kids on my own team - cool - I watched refs who didn't even know basic positioning or signals - I watched refs boot a dad out of the gym in a tournament after giving him multiple chances to not get booted out - in the first 5 minutes of a game... apparently he was the athletic director of the school... also cool. I watched a coach lose a game in the last 5 seconds because he called a timeout he didn't have and got a technical foul, to which he promptly tried to blame the scorers table for messing up the timeouts ...

I was working the scorers table ...

Of all the people to try and blame, he picked the wrong one - since I am pretty sure no other volunteer parents were showing the refs the timeouts remaining after every timeout called.

Mostly, I watched a lot of mediocre, inconsistent reffing that always seemed to show up at the worst possible times for my daughters team.

Because I was never really a basketball referee, in many cases it was refreshing, not because I learned anything new, but because I was able to see the same themes crop up in a different setting (youth sports) for a sport I probably have the least amount of hours in as a referee (basketball).

But as always - no matter the sport, the league, the fans, or the locations, some things are just universal.

So here are the big themes that I re-learned again watching a ton of youth ladies basketball over the last few years:

1) Bad Refs Never Feel Bad About Being Pointed in the Wrong Direction -

Have you ever walked around your house all day with one sock on?

Try it … it feels really weird. It feels like something is off…

That’s what it should feel like when you are facing the wrong direction in a game.

This is a concept I work on with new referees, often on the very first shift. You want to feel like something is really off if you have your back turned to the action.

The simplest way I like to describe the concept is, where are your hips pointed and where are your shoulders pointed ?

There is a whole bunch to say about refs just being out of position. Too many times to count of a trail referee not even making it to half court and just standing still or walking extremely slowly towards the half court line. But before you even talk about being way out of position, not being engaged in the game, basically making baseline calls but not even being on the baseline (and basically just guessing who the ball was out of bounds on) there is the idea of simply facing the action.

Time and time again you had refs slowly walking to the position they were supposed to be at, but facing the wrong direction, letting their back be turned to the action, and basically not really caring. There is motion, there is effort, parents can tell when you are barely moving. But this is actually different, because you can be out of position and still be facing the action as you get to where you were supposed to go. I’m talking about literally dozens of examples where a ball is being inbounded, or a play is coming down the court, and one referee is facing away from the action, with no real feeling that something is wrong. Sometimes they are even talking to someone in the stands, sometimes they are watching a game going on for a different court [this often happened with center court referees for a 3 court setup - quite common for some tournaments].

Several times - and I wish I was making this up - the game would start with a jump ball and the 2nd referee would not even be on the court yet. Forget about being in good position, they were still putting their jersey on, joking with someone in the stands, putting their phone away.... while every parent watched.

As a ref, everyone is watching you. While most parents probably don't know when a ref is “out of position” or playing the wrong line, most everyone can inherently sense when someone isn't really interested in what's going on by how much focus they put on what's right in front of them.

And the single best way to focus is to face the action.

Bad referees consistently have their back turned to the action, and don't feel bad about it.

Good and great referees feel like something is wrong when they are out of position, and definitely feel like something is wrong when the game is started and they are facing the wrong way.

Some of this might actually be unfair. Maybe a ref barely walking to half court is simply tired because many of these tournaments seemed consistently understaffed and maybe they are doing their 6th, or 7th or 10th game in a row. Who knows? We certainly know how reffing the same sport over and over can lead to boredom and drudgery, when the same calls are getting argued over and over again, and you have to make the same travel calls and the same double dribble calls.

But fatigue aside, refs should always be aware of the idea that they don’t change, and the system might not change, but the crowd does. The crowd is new almost every time.

Take sports out of it - If you went to see a famous Broadway show like Hamilton, and all of the actors on stage were kind of dis-interested, and kept turning their back to you, and going through the motions, because they have done the show 300 or 600 or 700 times, would you be like “yeah I get it ... ” or would you be plenty pissed off.... because you are watching for the first time ?

The thing that new refs often miss is that no one really cares how your day went, or your last game went, or how many game in a row you’ve been working up to that point. Is that unfair ?

Probably -

But its the reality - Nobody cares about how hard your last game was, they only care about the game they are watching right now.

So when you instantly go to a chair at halftime and start scrolling on your phone, everyone is watching. When you strike up a conversation with your friend in the stands because you are trying to break up the monotony of reffing 10 year old or 12 year old games, often with low skill level and lots of mistakes, everyone is also watching - but just like Hamilton - they are watching for the first time that day ... maybe the first time ever.

We had this problem last summer with flag football, where some refs would literally pull out their phone at half-time of a game and lay down on the field, scrolling through social media.

How much respect do you think that ref got in the 2nd half of the game ?

This is the mentality that many poor refs have, who can also sense when you have no choice but to keep scheduling them. Believe me, we’ve been their many times before. But the ref who slowly gets dressed as the game starts, who isn’t even rushing to get on the court, and who always has their back turned, is a ref who feels like they are doing you a favor.

And putting up with parents and coaches who are yelling isn’t just part of the job or human nature, its them doing you a favor.

Often this ref doesn't work out, and it has nothing to do with skill, it simply has to do with engagement. They don't really want to be there - maybe they just want a job, and as soon as another job comes along with a little more money and a little less running, you will never see them again.

They will probably go a step further, and say stuff like “yeah I used to ref, but they couldn't afford me.”

Those people are normally no great loss to your league or program, and those people definitely also don’t seem to mind having their back turned to the action.

There is an interesting flip side to this equation - When you have a really good ref ... they will just leave you.

Time and time again, I have been at a field or a league and talking to a referee and in mid-sentence they will just instantly start sprinting away from me. No worries about the convo we were having ... we can have it later.

The most important thing is the game. Not the distraction of the conversation

Good refs will just dust you, and leave you mid-sentence, not because they are rude, but because they have the right priorities. They will just take off ... and not even apologize. They will cut you off in mid-sentence to start talking to a player or coach.

The game is the number one priority. Their credibility is based on being connected to the game.

Zoom out a second, and look at just small business in general. Maybe even the OFFICE of a sports league. You are having a convo with the director of the league and the phone rings ...

Often times they will also leave you. Unless you are knee deep in a really valuable convo, the talk can wait, the player on the other end of the line is the priority. The player comes first ... the game comes first.

Bad refs have priorities too, but the game is never #1 ... hopefully its in the top 5 somewhere along with the conversation they are having with someone in the stands and checking the score of an “Important game” ... but that important game is actually on their phone.

Before you even start to talk about good calls or bad calls, escalators and defusers, the biggest communication a ref can show the coaches and the crowd is that they have no problem facing the wrong direction.

2) Barely Budge

Once you get past the idea of facing the wrong direction and assume, eventually, a lousy ref will turn and face the action, you get to the second big interaction problem.

None of these refs move.

Its not like they move slow, and you wish they sprinted more, or followed a fast break closer.

I mean they literally don’t move at all. They are watching the game flat footed, sometimes barely moving from the baseline of the other court and just standing their waiting for the play to come back their way.

Eventually if the play stays in the other half of the court for long enough you would find them slowly walking towards half court, but it seemed like almost a deal between two refs:

That half is yours, this half of the court is mine, and this way we can both move as little as possible.

Much like turning your back to the action, most good refs I know feel uncomfortable if they are flat footed.

They will pace back and forth, they will constantly be moving and shifting their feet, they will feel weird if their feet are still…. kinda like wearing one sock.

In this case the amount of times a ref seemed to be going out of their way to move as little as possible or not move at all was just kinda weird.

Refs who would point to a spot for a kid to inbound the ball from, but wouldn’t just walk over to the spot and hand it to them.

Refs who would just stand flat footed on the baseline and not even attempt to move toward the action when something was happening like a trap in the other corner.

It was bad in many cases ... but don’t worry ... it got worse.

Because often these same refs, who seemed lifeless and were almost trying to conserve energy, would spring to life during timeouts and during halftime, shooting three pointers, trying to dunk, and looking like for once they were finally enjoying themselves.

Not great optics....

To barely move the whole game and then start shooting baskets during a break in the action, it just doesn’t make a ton of sense. Very early on I would get on our flag football referees who would spend time during halftime trying to kick field goals.

Do you see the refs on TV doing that?

.... Then don’t do that.

Yet so often refs who seemed like they didn't want to be there would spring to life when THEY had a chance to play basketball and shoot some 3’s or even dribble during a long break in the action ... halftime/ timeouts/ in between games.

Nothing wrong with liking or even loving the sport you play... and not even sure there is anything wrong with shooting some baskets with other kids warming up during halftime. I would almost rather you do that then slump over and look at your phone.

It was the split screen of watching the ref barely move their feet for ten minutes, and then spring to life like they were being scouted by an NBA team WHEN THE GAME WAS IN A BREAK which created the biggest disconnect.

Oh you do have energy ... oh you do like to move ... just not when our daughter is actually playing. OK.

Bad optics, bad movement, bad engagement.

3) Look the Part -

On the topic of bad optics .... man ... how hard is it to mess up a basketball Referee uniform. Black and white stripes, black shorts or pants. Whistle. That’s pretty much it.

And yet - every uniform seemed like it was different. I’m not being picky here - I’m not even talking about when a referee was wearing what was clearly a football reffing jersey instead of a basketball one ... don’t care. Don’t even really care if you were wearing black shorts and they had some weird coloring on them or even some logos or lettering on them. Not ideal, but hey not the end of the world. If they were mostly black shorts or pants, no problem.

I’m talking about uniform choices that were just so off, that you almost had to wonder if the referee was deliberately trying to wreck their uniform.

Wearing grey sweatpants underneath black shorts. Wearing a huge purple sweatshirt underneath your ref jersey. Wearing ridiculous neon shoes that almost seemed like you were desperate for attention.

Let the players have the attention, nobody is there to watch you.

I kept hoping ... hoping one time that I would be just flat wrong, that when I looked at a referee before a game started and saw a ridiculous uniform choice with someone’s shorts, or a bizarre undershirt or jacket, and said “oh boy ... this might be a long game ...” I was hoping that I would be wrong.

I was never wrong....

In some cases the bad uniform was actually a quicker tell than any kind of mechanics or technique. Just a big bright flashing light that said I don’t really want to be here and don’t really mind how I do ... you are lucky I made the trip over here, now I am gonna wear whatever the heck I want.

The biggest tell of all though ?

The whistle ...

So many weird situations - I saw refs with a whistle with no lanyard - just loose in their hands (no finger adapter). I saw refs with a huge lanyard coming off the whistle holding the whistle in their hands and never putting it around their neck, so that the lanyard was a big giant string hanging off and getting in the way if they tried to make any hand signals. Sometimes you would notice a ref come off the sideline to start the game and have no whistle at all, because they never took it out of their pocket.

I get it - I have dealt with many refs who should never be let near a whistle, all the time while they were asking if they could get a Fox40 because “it was louder.”

I get the idea that many of these refs were next to brand new, and they were paired with a senior ref who made almost all of the calls, and just looked at them to grab the ball and call out of bounds once and a while.

We have certainly done that many a time. A senior ref can drag around a rookie ref pretty far....

But if you are going to use refs that are so inexperienced that I get a bad feeling in my stomach BEFORE the game even starts, at least teach them how to hold a whistle. At least tell them to wear a black or white undershirt, and maybe ... just once and a while, tuck your shirt in ? Then maybe I could at least say you are trying and not taking your reffing gig for granted.

How can you be so precise on a lane violation, or calling a turnover because a lady stepped over the line on an INBOUND PASS, and be so imprecise with how you look and present yourselves to the entire court ?

4) Ditch the System

Notice in our first big three ideas, we haven't even gotten to bad or incorrect calls. Mainly just optics and engagement.

Don't worry - there were plenty of bad calls.

But the thing that I found more amazing was not whether a call was good or bad, right or wrong, because in some cases there were so many bad calls they did indeed even themselves out, but rather the system that refs used when making calls to communicate the call and maybe more importantly to communicate to the scorers table.

Keep in mind... for every one of the games their are volunteer parents working the scorers table. Parents who don’t know how to fill out a foul sheet, or track timeouts, barely know how to work the scoreboard, and barely have the confidence to even notify a referee when a team is in the bonus for a quarter or half.

Because these parents are all volunteers and new, you would think you need to overcommunicate and over exaggerate the game info to the scorers table - That was a foul ... it was on number 13 ... but often it went in the other direction.

Situations where a ref would blow the whistle to kill the action, and actually not signal anything ...

Both as a fan and volunteer working the table - which I did many times - simply asking what was the call ?

Was that a travel, was that a foul ? What just happened ?

In some cases it was just sloppiness - A ref yelling “NUMBER 13!!” across the court to me -

Why are you yelling ? I can’t hear you ... there are 3 games going at once ... show me the number?

In other cases it seemed clear that refs would just blow the whistle and not really understand why they blew it - They knew something was wrong, and they were new, and they couldn’t quite process things fast enough, which might sound weird to say ... but in my opinion …

That is totally FINE !!

Building a ref brain takes time - If you blow the whistle because you know there was a foul and you need to figure out over time who it was on (and ask them to turn around and show you the back of their jersey) that’s ACTUALLY TOTALLY FINE.

If you have a weird play and you blow your whistle because you know somethings wrong but you cant quite decide whether it was a travel or a double dribble or maybe a jump ball - that weird play where its kind of a block but the player jumps up in the air that happens A LOT in youth basketball - that’s actually ok by me.....

AS LONG AS YOU EVENTUALLY SIGNAL SOMETHING!!!

Time and time again you would have these awkward, strange moments where a whistle was blown and the ref signaled nothing, sometimes even wanting to wipe away a basket on a travel call, but they don’t even signal the travel. Sometimes they were just saying it to themselves ... which I also get ... so it seemed so obvious to them ... but not to the fans and NOT TO THE PEOPLE WORKING THE SCORERS TABLE!!

Inconsistency is one thing - You call a scrum a jump ball one time, then you call it a foul on the defense the second time. In youth basketball you have a ton of jump ball calls. Sometimes its a clean block, sometimes a block is a jump ball, sometimes it is a foul. Ok sure. Different situations ... different perspective.

But bad habits and inconsistency with how you literally just show the scorers table, let alone the crowd, what exactly the call that was just made actually was a constant struggle.

Make a slow call, make a late call, but build the habit of making a signal and making a call.

Most parents understand the signal for a travel or a double dribble or a jump ball.

They don’t understand when you blow your whistle and just look down and stare at the floor ... and then get mad at the other team for not coming over to inbound the ball.... because the other team doesn’t understand what happened either.

Build the habit of showing me the number of the foul and not just barking it across the court and then making me ask you later.

Build the habit of checking in with the scorers table once and a while so I don’t have to yell at YOU from across the court that you should not be inbounding because that foul puts one team in the bonus and they should be shooting a 1 on 1.

Refs WERE very good about showing the correct call when their was confusion about whether a shot was a 2 or 3 pointer. This was good stuff. This was the MOST consistent, the most clear .... In most every other situation they created more confusion then they solved.

In multiple games, the amount of times that a team went on a long string of getting rewarded possession on a jump ball just seemed impossible. I get a mistake once and a while. Most refs should have a system for jump ball because there are so many in youth basketball and asking the scorers table and their volunteers to keep track of that is really a lot to ask.

Maybe you have a coin in your pocket, a wristband, however you want to do it...

It seemed clear though that many refs did not have a habit for this, and were either getting it wrong, or just making it up and trying to REMEBER who had the last possession arrow.

One game my daughters opponent got FOUR jump balls in a row. Ehhhh it must be me ... that’s impossible. I must have turned my head and missed one or been talking to another parent and missed something. My bad.

At halftime guess what three parents came up to me and asked (because they kind of know me as the referee guy)....?

“DID YOU SEE THEM GIVE THE OTHER TEAM 4 JUMP BALLS IN A ROW?!?!!??

If these other parents noticed it ... it was a thing.

If it was only one game ... a fluke ... no problem.

It happened ... a lot. Many games with long stretches of jump balls that just seemed to defy statistics and gravity. 3 in a row ... 4 in a row ... almost like you were flipping a coin in your head and it landed on heads 4 times in a row.

Habits make the ref no matter the sport. Different sports have different habits. But its not normally the call - The call can be good or bad. It’s when you make a good call that you explain badly, or don’t follow habits to communicate and confuse everyone, that can make the best call a bad one because you have no consistent system and you have no habits for core pieces of game info.

This is what most rec refs never understand - They start with a basic theory:

If I make a correct call ... I get rewarded - If I make an incorrect call ... I will get yelled at and heckled and questioned.

Here you have refs making calls and nobody even knows if they are correct or incorrect because they are all “Bad calls” - they are not communicated and in some cases the ref is deciding them on the fly -

They are all bad because they follow no habits and no system - It becomes a self fulfilling loop....

Calls aren’t made the same way and communicated the same way with the same system, so when close calls need to be made there is hesitation and confusion, which leads to more non-systemic calls, and more confusion, and more hesitation about the most important thing I noticed:

5) Bad Refs Always Talk Themselves Out of the Most Obvious Calls

It comes last in our story, but it squares the circle of all refs ... not just summertime basketball refs.

Bad refs start by having their back constantly turned to the action, and they finish by being unable to make the easiest and most obvious calls.

Much like most sports - including flag football, including soccer - they always start with one spot

Contact.

You will see a bad ref have the most obvious contact foul in front of them, and try and figure out a way to not make the call.

You will hear the slap.
You will see a player move sideways with forward momentum
And yes …you will see the scratch marks and the bruises on the legs and even bleeding on the arms.

And you will wonder ... was I watching a different game?

Forget basketball - my daughter played soccer for years. Game after game, just some of the most comically bad offsides calls I have seen. One game they took away the winning goal from her team when there was no actual offsides call made live on the field, but the head ref went and talked to the line ref for 2 minutes and then came back and made the call.

They must have been checking the VAR system that didn’t exist for a 12 year old soccer game.

The things that were not called ... contact, contact, contact ...

It was the most odd thing, out of many odd things. Refs seemed to have no problem making travel calls and double dribble calls over and over again. They would call lane violations. They would call back court violations, they would call inbound violations.

They would even call a lot of blocking fouls.

But in almost every case ... these blocking fouls were on the floor.

Then on drive after drive, massive amounts of contact was just simply never called.

In many cases there was never a foul called unless the player fell to the floor ...

… but even more un-nerving ... sometimes if a player fell to the floor “too much or too big” there was also not a call made.

I guess the refs assumed that a player falling to the floor with that speed must be flopping?

This is nothing against the refs, because its nothing new, its human nature.

I have seen it a thousand times with flag football refs, who will flag you on the first play of the game for a false start, but find a reason to not call an obvious pass interference call ... often times because you got to “let em play.”

The “let them play” line ... that I have heard across many sports ... always means one thing:

TOO Much Contact

Soccer, Basketball, Flag Football - always the same - elbows, arms, body, too much contact -

A couple of interesting things I noticed with the obvious calls that should have just been automatically called but never were:

A) Many refs had a ‘fallback signal’ that they would use when not calling a really obvious foul. The young and inexperienced refs just would stare and not make a call, or flinch and fiddle with their whistle, and not make the call.

The veteran referees, who were easy to identify because they were always taking the game over and carrying the young refs, would have a “fallback signal” - sometimes one that made sense like swiping two hands together to indicate a block (once and a while it actually was a block ... the other times ... no way) or some other hand gesture like hands outstretched or turning their palms up to face the sky. The amount of times they would make these signals vs the amount of times there was just an easy foul call to make ... yeah just didn’t make sense.

They knew that there was a call, so they were signaling something, often a made up signal, in order to avoid making the call.

B) Many times I would watch refs get frustrated that they actually had made a call, and that no one was responding. They would just keep blowing the whistle again and again getting more and more agitated. One ref even had a whole “bit” he would do taking the whistle out of his mouth and looking at it and leaning his head from side to side ... implying that he used this bit quite often ... it was actually pretty funny the first time I saw it.

You will see this in almost any rec league. An umpire or ref making a call and no one responds (an umpire calling time in softball as people race around the bases, a flag football ref blowing their whistle over and over again but the play goes on) so they keep doing the thing that no one is responding to.

The interesting part is of course that they ignore that its an issue of proximity - some tournaments have two or three courts going at once side to side - so nobody hears the whistle - but they also never adjust their reffing. They never move closer, they never change their engagement with the game, and they never adjust the most important and credible part of the whole puzzle:

Instead of demanding credibility by blowing the whistle louder and louder - they could earn more credibility by making more obvious calls, and making them with the same system and the same signals every time.

I’m not sure what all this means. The excuse of a ref “having a bad day” or being in-experienced went out the window after a month or so. This was seasons and years of lousy, bad reffing. At one point one day, the game got so physical that our coach just called the game with 5 minutes left - which was the correct call in my opinion - because there were so many hard contact fouls that were not being called. Coincidentally this was a game with only 1 ref ... because the other one literally didn't show up….

I will leave it to other coaches or experts to chime in on whether allowing this much contact is good or bad for youth sports or ladies basketball. But I know one thing ... its bad reffing. Not bad because of perspective, or because of training or education ... but just a basic lack of effort.

Not making a call because it was a clean block is one thing ... not making a call because you weren’t anywhere close to where you were supposed to be to make the call is a whole other issue.

You can’t teach effort. You can’t teach someone to give a damn - either they do, or they dont.

As frustrated as I was, I seldom said anything to the refs. Hopefully I, of all people, would know better.

I chimed in a few times when things were so out of whack or so dangerous that I felt like I needed to.

The one time that the Senior ref/ Rookie ref system was broken - and we ended up with two brand new rookie refs who were both reffing on the same sideline - and missing huge calls on the other side of the court -I spoke with them at halftime ... they did not seem to understand what I was talking about.

One time I mentioned to a ref that our center had been elbowed in the head for the THIRD time, and as she was walking off the court - crying and holding her head - his response was kinda of disappointing:

Do you want the whistle?

“Yeah actually ... I wouldn’t mind it at all ... I will show you how to call a contact foul.”

He didn’t respond after that…

I guess he was just used to steam-rolling parents, who were watching the same games that I did for the last 3 years.

I get it ... I get that parents can be huge jerks - in that moment where our player was walking off the court crying (she never came back in the game) I actually was a jerk - Parents can only see what affects their kid and nothing else - and most parents don’t understand fundamental rules.

But we can do better than this... and we should try.

I try every day. Hopefully it helps.

SDM