Squeaky wheel gets the calls?
Raptors make the case that the stoic Leonard draws fewer fouls than complainers
When Raptors coach Nick Nurse was fined $15,000 (U.S.) this week for claiming Kawhi Leonard received unfair treatment from referees in a loss in Denver, it was seen by many as money well spent. Publicly going to bat for one of the NBA’s best impending free agents can’t be a bad thing.
But beyond Nurse’s public lambasting of officials, sources say the Raptors also made a private case to the league office to plant a seed for future consideration. In a league infamous for star players who complain about nearly every call, the club used years of data to argue the stoic Leonard draws fewer fouls because he mostly opts for silent perseverance over petulant protest. In other words, he doesn’t complain, so he doesn’t get calls. The Raptors, who are aiming at a deep playoff run while sporting the league’s best record, are hoping such a perceived double standard doesn’t persist as the games get bigger.
In an interview this week Monty McCutchen, NBA vice-president and
head of referee development and training, acknowledged being privy to Toronto’s argument but insisted that, by and large, the NBA’s highly scrutinized officials can’t afford to be swayed by lobbying from players and coaches.
“I think there’s a perception the players that are high-usage players that complain a lot get more (favourable) treatment,” McCutchen said. “(For referees) there’s just no way you can survive over an 82-game schedule if you’re sitting there going, ‘Oh, well, this person complains and (this person doesn’t) …’ Am I going to sit here and tell you that someone doesn’t ever give in to those complaints on an individual basis? Well, of course not. We all have moments of weakness where we give in. We’re human beings.”
The question is, of course: Considering the NBA has seen a good number of its most experienced referees retire in the past handful of years, how many moments of weakness are too many? It says something that in the 12 months since McCutchen stepped away from a 25-year career as one of the sport’s highest-rated refs to assume the helm as the league’s top overseer of officials, the league has developed a plan designed to further minimize such human frailty. The NBA is now evaluating and tracking referees on a set of what McCutchen calls “intangibles” — qualities such as “resoluteness” and “courageousness” that go beyond getting a call right or wrong. The league has graded every call made in every game as correct or incorrect since 2003 and will continue to do so.
McCutchen sketched out an example of an “intangible” scenario his department now tracks. A referee is verbally pressured by a coach to pay attention to what the coach claims is an illegal forearm being delivered by an opponent.
“(Either) the referee holds strong and calls the play as it should, or maybe they then give in and call a weak forearm that’s not really illegal. We’re marking that,” McCutchen said.
A referee who holds strong and makes the right call would be given a mark for a positive intangible known as “resoluteness.” A referee who caves and makes a bad decision would be cited for a negative intangible termed “avoidance.”
Another example of avoidance? A referee turns a blind eye to a profane outburst from a player even though the outburst meets the standard for a technical foul. McCutchen said that referee’s unwillingness to “meet the moment” puts undue pressure on colleagues to make the call and needs to be documented so his department can identify weak spots.
“Do (referees) uphold the standards of the NBA or are they, as (Toronto) is suggesting, giving in to the standing of the player? In (Toronto’s) assertion, that standing is who’s yelling the most,” McCutchen said. “Because if we’re giving in to that complainer, then we’re also giving in to the standing of the player. And then it’s, ‘Well, Kawhi’s the third-best player and this is the fourth-best player, so this one needs to go this way.’ Or, ‘Kawhi’s the third-best player but now we’re in the finals and he’s playing against one of the people that are ahead.’ Can you imagine the lack of integrity that would bring to our game?”
To which Jeff Van Gundy, the ESPN analyst and former NBA coach, would say: The NBA’s squeakiest wheels have been getting the proverbial grease for years. Van Gundy, speaking over the phone this week, said he observed the phenomenon most glaringly while coaching Yao Ming, the seven-foot-six Hall-of-Famer known for absorbing punishment from opponents with rare complaint during a career that ended in 2011. Because Yao mostly met contact with silence during his seven-plus seasons starring for the Houston Rockets, Van Gundy is convinced referees often followed suit.
“I know it hurt Yao as far as the number of free-throw attempts he got,” Van Gundy said.
Van Gundy calls it a “quiet bias.” Toronto fans might call it a Kawhi bias. It’s the notion that players who heed the NBA’s oft-repeated appeal to refrain from chronic complaining pay dearly for their stoicism.
“There’ll be some out there who think, ‘Oh, no. It doesn’t happen like that. The officials respect those guys who give them respect,’ ” Van Gundy said. “I think they do respect them. But that doesn’t mean they give them the same whistle.”
While the Raptors largely tiptoed around the issue this week in the wake of Nurse’s fine, at least a couple players expressed agreement with Van Gundy’s assertion.
“I think there’s something to that, a little bit,” said C.J. Miles, the veteran swingman.
“I think so,” nodded Danny Green, Leonard’s long-time teammate. “With (Leonard), I wouldn’t say (being quiet) hurts him, but I don’t think it helps him.”
McCutchen, of course, has heard all the popular claims about the factors that may or may not sway the blowing of a whistle. There’s a size bias, Van Gundy has argued, wherein stronger-than-average players such as Yao and Shaquille O’Neal and possibly Leonard, get the short shrift while ably fighting through contact from smaller defenders. And Green made the point that some of the players who shoot the most free throws live off their ability to “flop and act.”
“We give in to superstars. We do this. We do that. We don’t call travelling …” McCutchen said, reeling some of the rest of the laundry list. “And it’s our job to train above that, and to hold (referee) accountable to standards, not standing.”
To that end, McCutchen said each of NBA’s 75 referees is in regular contact with one of five developmental advisers — a group of experienced ex-referees that includes Joey Crawford, the 39-year veteran who worked more playoff games than anyone in the league history. It’s the developmental advisers who grade referees on intangibles. McCutchen sees it as an important step forward in developing a better on-court product.
“What I’m excited about is we have an institutional commitment to grow our staff in these ways, ways that have not always been talked about, at least out in the light,” McCutchen said.
“You would talk about it in the locker room, but you weren’t really holding people accountable to it.”
McCutchen said it’s “easy” for coaches and players and media to toss around accusations of bias, which is fair enough. What’s undeniable is that it’s hard to be an NBA referee. Moments go unmet. Mistakes are made. And those who repeatedly make the same ones simply don’t advance their careers.
“(Referees) have to prove themselves over and over and over up against this set of intangibles, up against the standard that we have,” McCutchen said. “And that kind of vetting, and that kind of scrutiny really means that the people who give into complainers the way (Toronto) suggested, they get fired if they do it consistently. And we’re all human beings. I’m not going to sit here and tell you one person didn’t do it in one game … But as a rule, it will not abide on my watch. It just won’t.”
So if it’s true that a quiet bias, or a Kawhi bias, exists, McCutchen would argue the league has never been in a better position to eradicate it from its midst — or at least minimize its appearance when it matters. Even Van Gundy expressed faith that McCutchen might be the man to improve the situation.
“I have such a belief in Monty and his integrity,” Van Gundy said. “When I was arguing for Yao, I didn’t have that same belief.”
Now that the Raptors have registered their complaint, they’re hoping the result is tangible.