There is no shortage of security measures and checks and balances for gauging the performance of NBA referees, commissioner David Stern said Tuesday.
Even at that, the league failed to notice anything unusual about the calls of referee Tim Donaghy, who has been accused of betting on games, including some he worked the past two seasons.
For the 2003-04 season, the league began putting in an extensive system that logs all calls referees make, and makes note of calls that were considered to be wrong. Each of the NBA’s 30 teams has a person assigned to observe the calls referees make. That person then reviews game tape afterward. Referees review game film after games as well. To ensure integrity, the observers are subject to being audited, Stern said. The auditors are audited as well.
“I guess with respect to that, I can say that what we did with our officials when we began this, because this was new, in all of professional sports, was to assure them that the primary purpose of this system was designed for their development to make them better officials,” Stern said at a news conference.
“And that is not to say that if something unusual popped up, we wouldn’t pursue it, but it was not predominately developed as a screen for criminal activity.”
But the investigation of Donaghy, who allegedly bet on games, stands to change how the NBA views its system. At the very least, it has raised plenty of questions about how referees are watched.
“We’ll continue to work, I mean, to be transparent in the sense that our fans know how the system works,” Stern said. “We will do that. We’re not transparent enough. We will continue to recruit and improve our recruitment, which is another ongoing issue.”
As early as 2003, officials were not permitted to work any more than nine games of any team and aren’t permitted to work in the same city more than once in a 14-day span.
“We do subject our referees to extensive security checks, to the limit provided by the law,” Stern said. “That is to say, with their authorization each year for the past two years, we have conducted personal background checks that cover credit, bank account, litigation, civil and criminal, assets including real property, debt, you name it; if it’s legal to have it, we do it.”
Staff writer Chris Dempsey can be reached at 303-954-1279 or cdempsey@denverpost.com.
