NBA turns to G League referees

The virus outbreak hasn’t just sent NBA teams looking for help from the G League. The NBA refereeing corps has had to do the same.

A trio of G League officials — Tyler Mirkovich, Clare Aubry and Pat O’Connell — were assigned games on Friday, the NBA debuts for all three. It was the first time that the NBA had to call up G League officials to work games this season.

Mirkovich was assigned Phoenix at Boston, Aubry got Atlanta at Cleveland and O’Connell was picked for New York at Oklahoma City.

“I think the whole league is in a concerned place,” said Monty McCutchen, the former official who is now an NBA executive overseeing all referee matters. “We want our league to be healthy and we want the players to feel safe and healthy. We want coaches and staffs to feel health and safety is a priority and the same is true for referees.”

None of the three G League refs called up Friday has even worked an NBA preseason game. But with about onethird of the league’s referees unable to work right now, mostly because of coronavirus-related reasons and a few because of injury, the NBA had no choice but to seek help.

“We have some people out with health and safety protocols. That’s no secret,” McCutchen said. “And we’re using some people from the G League that we have a lot of confidence in that can give us this temporary coverage that we’re in need of.”