SMUSH IN STRIPES
Ex-NBA player Parker is determined to make it back to league as a referee
Arec league player, unhappy with a call, throws out an insult. It backfires. “Where did you learn to play basketball,” he complains.
The player is quickly informed about the referee’s background.
“He subs himself out,” Smush Parker recalls. “He got his phone, Google’s my name. Then apologizes.”
Parker, 38, tells that story while changing into a blackand-white striped shirt inside Art & Design High School in Manhattan. In a few minutes, the former Lakers point guard will officiate a Corporate League game in an empty gym. One sub per team. No coaches. Nobody in the bleachers.
It’s the ground floor of what Parker hopes is a rise to NBA referee, which would make him the first former NBA player since Haywoode Workman to complete that path. The competition in the Corporate League game is spirited and physical, even if it’s played well below the rim. The stakes are high enough for the center to approach Parker and vehemently protest a call near the end of a close game. His aggression could’ve prompted a tech from a ref with a lighter trigger.
“But as a former player, I understand those emotions,” Parker reasons.
For Parker, more than anything, it’s a learning experience. A necessary rep. His written test for certification is next month, and the study guide is sitting on Parker’s coffee table. He’s being pushed along by Bernard Bowen, the founder of B-Ball Referees, who says he placed Parker on “the fast track” toward the pros.
“This is not a hobby. It was not a ploy to get back in the league,” Parker says. “This is something I’m passionate about.” •••••••••••••••••
The Kobe Bryant thing is tough to live down.
When Parker took his refereeing aspirations public on Instagram recently, he was texted a photoshopped picture of Bryant looking mockingly at Parker in an referee uniform. Parker thought it was Bleacher Report poking fun and issued a mild response. Soft treading for a social media beef, but Parker regrets letting it get to him.
“I apologize to Bleacher Report,” says Parker, who only created a Twitter account because somebody was using a fake one under his name to disparage Bryant. “Somebody sent me false information, a photoshop that I thought came from Bleacher Report. I should’ve done my own research.”
Still, Parker insists the Bryant barbs are no longer bothersome. Besides, there’s nothing he can do. Parker apologized a long time ago for calling Bryant a bad teammate, among other things, in a 2009 interview.
Bryant had responded with stinging public insults — most notably calling Parker the worst player in the NBA — and the two never spoke again despite starting 157 games together in the Lakers backcourt.
Just last year, Parker’s name surfaced in two of Bryant’s interviews, both in unflattering terms.
“Things that I said, I was young, I put it out there, I shouldn’t have,” Parker says. “But Kobe still has things to say about me. At this point, I really think that Kobe loves me with how much he talks about me.”
Parker’s career after the Lakers was a journey around the globe. The Brooklyn product, who developed his game on the caged courts of West 4th St., competed professionally in Greece, China, Russia, Croatia, Lebanon, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Tunisia, Morocco and even Mongolia.
In Greece, Parker played a championship game as fans shot flares at each other across the court. Officials delayed the game for 2 ½ hours, kicked out all the spectators, and
Parker won the ti“Whether tle in an empty arena. we won or we lost, they were burning down the city,” Parker says. “They’re so passionate about their sports.”
But as opportunities were drying up, Parker started giving serious consideration to life after basketball. Four years ago, he expressed to the NBA his desire to officiate and attended a seminar designed to help players find careers within the league.
Most chose coaching, TV work or an executive position. Parker chose refereeing.
“I think I was the only one,” he says. “For four years now I had it in my head that I was going to become an official.”
The NBA advised Parker to retire before beginning this journey. He pieced together a couple more seasons in obscure leagues and an aborted campaign with the Albany Patroons. Parker can still dunk – as he demonstrated at halftime of the Corporate League game last week – but the Brooklyn resident is officially re
tired as a player.
Smush is committed to the whistle. •••••••••••••••••••• The hardest part is the mechanics.
“It’s almost like you’re learning ballet. There’s form. There are certain postures,” Parker says. “There’s certain way you have to conduct your body. It’s very structured. You can’t just call a foul and do any old arm raise.”
Parker makes a determined motion.
“It needs to be like this.” Positioning on the court.
Proper verbal and signal commands — they’re the behindthe-scenes procedural aspects of officiating, and non-negotiable at the highest level. They must be mastered and conditioned into the brain, like looking both ways before crossing the street.
Watching Parker navigate the court last week, it’s clear he hasn’t yet reached that level of comfort.
“You have to snap every call. Point to certain places. It’s very structured,” Parker says. “That’s the side of it I didn’t see as a player. Just seeing the game, seeing the flow of the game, reading the game, reading plays – that’s the easy part. I played. That’s the easy part for me.”
Bowen, who has run B-Ball Referees for 20 years, suggested two exercises for Parker: Stand in front of the mirror and practice the motions; and watch an NBA game without volume and make calls as they happen on the television.
“And see if it’s the same call they’re making in the game,” Bowen says.
“You have to be able to blow your whistle, verbally command what’s needed to be commanded once you blow your whistle, and know how to make your presentation,” Bowen adds. “He wants it and he’s doing it. He’s into it. I think he can be a very good official.”
Bowen worked his connections to get Parker a meeting with recruiters and scouts from the NBA’s referee organization. Recruiters for the G League watched Parker ref a game at Art & Science High School, then provided feedback to Bowen.
“They told me he’s got the height, he’s got the voice, but he’s got to get reps,” Bowen says. “More games.”
Bowen, a banker by trade who also used to officiate games on West 4th St., has a personal connection with Parker having known him “since he was 7 or 8 years old.” He’s established a schedule for Parker to follow, including a June camp in Daytona that could land Parker in the NBA’s system.
“That’s going to make or break him,” Bowen says. “It’s a late start for Smush so he has to work harder.”
Regardless of how this ends up — block or charge — Parker is making a real run at officiating.