Addressing problems both old (The perception and reality of conspirator referees.) and new (replacement referees), the NBA unveils its Video Rulebook: The NBA Video Rulebook website is intended to help explain the Rules of the NBA game to all interested parties - our teams, the media, and our fans.
At Basketball Prospectus, Kevin Pelton shows, that during the last lockout, replacement refs were not demonstrably more likely to call fouls during the regular season: Overall, the stats suggest that the replacement referees had only a limited impact on how the game was played 14 years ago. Now, contemporary accounts certainly suggest that there were issues with the replacements outside the box score, particularly in their ability to manage the physical nature of the NBA game. However, they were also in a different situation. For example, during most of the replacement period teams of two referees were working games as opposed to the standard crew of three that has been maintained this time because the league has a deeper pool of available replacements.
Certainly, the league will suffer with second-tier officials calling games instead of the ones we are so often told by the league are the best in the world. (I don't disagree.) The sooner the regular refs get back to work, the better for everyone involved. Still, this look back to 1995-96 offers some hope that the prodigious foul totals we have seen so far during the postseason may not continue when the games count. For everyone who prefers basketball to free throw contests, that's a good thing.
The refusal of the three officials to communicate with Larry Brown while ejecting him from the game Monday night reflected poorly on them and/or the instructions they've been given but I'm withholding judgment about the replacement refs on the issue of the number of fouls they call until the games start to count.
Howard Beck remembers the last time the NBA locked out the refs: “They need five of these guys to equal one of the regular refs,” Charles Oakley, the former Knicks bruiser, complained in 1995. He described the replacements in one word: “Terrible.”
On the night the regular referees returned, after a 68-day standoff, some players could hardly contain their joy.
“The real refs are back?” the Washington Bullets’ Chris Webber said. “Hallelujah.”
Expect the replacement referees to be inconsistent in different ways and their inconsistency to indicate, perhaps, some ways in which the league wants games officiated differently. Not that the lockout isn't primarily about money and power. Nor that the better replacement refs won't eventually be assimilated:17 of the N.B.A.’s current referees began as replacements. That group that includes some of the league’s most respected referees, as well as some of its most controversial.
Joey Crawford joined the N.B.A. during a strike in 1977. Danny Crawford, Ken Mauer, Eddie F. Rush and Derrick Stafford got their start during a lockout in 1983. Twelve others, including Bill Kennedy and Leon Wood, broke into the N.B.A. during the 1995 lockout.
