FORMER NBA REF BLASTS OFFICIATING

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FORMER NBA REF BLASTS OFFICIATING
By FRED KERBER

August 17, 2007 -- The former head of the NBA referees union and a league
official for 26 years yesterday said rogue referee Tim Donaghy was able to
slip through the cracks because refereeing has gotten worse and cited the
final shot of Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls career as an example where a
player's reputation prevented a proper call. 

Mike Mathis, who retired in 2001, said Donaghy's guilty plea in federal court
to betting on games he officiated and supplying inside information to mob
affiliates, came as "a stick of dynamite" to the league. But Mathis said,
"another stick of dynamite should be utilized (to) clean the entire
officiating office and start from scratch."

Mathis, who had been snared in the NBA officials' airline ticket scandal in
the late 1990's, has been loudly critical of NBA officiating. Mathis charged
too many supervisors are unqualified and that referees are hired based on
who, not what, they know.

Though angrily denouncing Donaghy's actions, Mathis referenced the pivotal
shot in Game 6 of the 1998 Finals by Jordan against the Utah Jazz that gave
the Bulls their sixth and final championship in the Jordan era. Many observers
maintain Jordan committed an offensive foul, but it was not called because of
Jordan's stature and reputation. 

"Refereeing has gone downhill," said Mathis, who runs the Mathis Foundation
that works with and supplies scholarships for foster kids in Cincinnati.
"Remember when Jordan hit that winning shot? I'm going to give you exactly
what the commentators said: 'What a great move by Michael.' Was that a great
move or was that an offensive foul? There was no question it was a push-off.
No buts about it. The only buts you can have is, 'Well, it was Michael
Jordan.' That was a defining moment.

"The video tape would never lie," Mathis said. "Here's what could have
happened. The referee makes the call and it's, 'No, no. How could he do that?
It was Michael Jordan.' "

If what Mathis called "funny stuff" went on in games Donaghy worked, it likely
went unnoticed because of the level officiating has hit.

"(We) accept unbelievable, mediocre and bad officiating," Mathis said. "The
commentator says, 'He must have seen something we didn't.' No, he didn't.
It's either he's guessing, he's incompetent or there's some funny stuff going
on."

Donaghy admitted to federal officials that he often supplied inside
information to gamblers, alerting them to what referees were working
particular games. He said he was aware how some referees interacted with
certain players.

"The first thing I went through was shock," Mathis said when he learned of
Donaghy's transgressions. "Then I got angry. Then I said, 'What caused this?'
I'm not talking about the gambling, I'm talking about the deterioration of
the refereeing that has allowed this to go undetected. . . . If he was doing
the funny stuff, I'm not saying he would have been caught but we might have
had a chance, because all of a sudden he's standing out by calling all these
calls."

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http://www.nypost.com/seven/08172007/sports/
former_nba_ref_blasts_officiating_sports_fred_kerber.htm 

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