NBA experimenting with 4 officials, other refereeing initiatives

SALT LAKE CITY — In an effort to further improve NBA refereeing, the league experimented with having four officials on the floor at once in a recent Utah Jazz Summer League game between Utah and Boston.

Why might four referees be an improvement over three? Consider this play from Jazz vs. Rockets on January 4th. With 25 seconds left, Jeff Withey gets fouled by two Houston players as he goes up for the tying dunk, but the call isn't made. Why?

Well, take a look at the screenshot from above at the critical moment:

There's no referee that can really make this call. The baseline weakside ref has his view obstructed by the basket and rim: he doesn't know if Montrezl Harrell actually gets ball or arm with his block attempt. The other weakside trailing ref has two players and the rim in the way of the play. And, in an unfortunate twist for the Jazz, the strongside ref, the referee who would normally have the best view of the play, has his sightline totally obstructed by Rodney Hood running in front of him at the wrong moment.

Having four referees on the court, a reform favored by Jazz executives, likely would have resulted in a call here. That being said, there are definite pros and cons to that approach.

To learn more, I spoke with Mike Bantom, the NBA's executive vice president of referee operations.

KSL: Where did the four referee idea come from?

Bantom: Well it's been an idea, a thought, that's been being kicked around the league for a couple years now. 20 years ago we were a two man crew and then we went to three. In our constant search to try to get better and looking at different ways of doing that, the idea of maybe having a fourth referee was raised. We played around with it a little bit in the couple of practice sessions out there in Vegas, and then this year we decided to take a more formal look at it and use it in a couple summer league games. Now, since we have a little bit better at keeping data on these types of things we try to look at some data and see if there were any advantages to it.

KSL: What kind of advantages or disadvantages are there, conceptually, to having a fourth referee?

Bantom: Well the advantage, I guess, would be court coverage. You know, the simple answer would be eight eyes are better than six, but that remains to be seen. We have a process right now where all three guys are integrated in terms of their court coverage, everybody knows where they should be looking while the other person is responsible for their particular areas. And so we're looking to see if adding a fourth person and changing those responsibilities and still trying to integrate them would give us you know even better coverage than we have. I mean, right now, our accuracy is pretty good on terms in terms of the whistles that we blow, but you know it can always get better. I think we understand that how many people you put out there, they're probably never going to be perfect, but perhaps we could get better we could improve in some areas. There are some calls that perhaps we could do a better job on and we're looking to see if adding a fourth person would in fact increase our accuracy on certain types of calls.

KSL: One worry with the current three referee system is that baseline weakside spot, where it might be difficult to spot calls. Would a fourth official help with that?

Bantom: Well, I think that's one of the things we're looking at. One of the ways we're looking at employing that fourth referee is as a second referee on the baseline on that weak side so that the lead official does not have to transition from one side of the court to the other as the ball gets reversed. So we have two lead officials and we have coverage on that weak side underneath the basket, and we have two referees covering any plays coming to the basket. That's the advantage of that particular formation. It is not as effective in helping us in some of the areas. For example, on the perimeter, where there's a lot of play now in today's game, where also a lot of the hard to detect travels take place, we still have the same two man coverage. So, that particular formation is helpful in some ways and not so helpful in others. We also look at another formation where there are two slot referees, and there's one lead and one trail, and that gives us some of some advantages in terms of that the other one doesn't give us. But then there are some rotation issues with that, that we have to try and take a look at and see if we can smooth those out before that would be something that would be employable.

KSL: What would be the next step if you choose to further experiment with having four referees?

Bantom: The next step would be to do it in the D-League in the course of the season, during the regular season and then also probably roll it into all the summer league games. It's just inherently something that's going to take a little bit of time, because if we were to go to a system that had four referees, we need significantly more officials on our staff. That's not an easy thing to do.

KSL: What has feedback from the referees been like so far?

Bantom: There's pros and cons to everything. One formation causes significantly more running for the officials. Particularly the referee that's in the slot position has to run a lot more to the lead position, which is further, and also has to do it more frequently. Even after baskets he has to sprint to get to the other end in time to be there in position to judge the play. So there's more running in some instances. Parts of it they like. That trail official in the two slot formation gets a great look from the center of the court plays going to the basket, angles that we don't normally get. And I think it resulted in a few calls in some of the games that we've used it so far that we probably would not have seen with a three man rotation.

A big change like this will require significant lead time if the NBA chooses to go forward with it. As Bantom points out, many more referees will have to be identified, selected, and trained. Those additional referees will probably be worse, at first, than their seasoned NBA counterparts. But as the NBA's ability to collect data on refereeing decisions has improved, they can more significantly study the pros and cons of something like this change.

A couple of other refereeing notes I was able to speak to Bantom about:

• During the NBA Playoffs, the National Basketball Referees Association called for an end to the "Last Two Minute" reports, which grade every call and non-call made by the referees at the end of close games. Bantom, though, says that the NBA plans on moving forward with those reports next season, and "will continue to look for more ways to be transparent." Bantom: "I think it is good for the fans and overall it's good for the game for everyone to understand how we do things here."
• Another possible reform would be to give NBA referees a "scouting report" on each team, presenting data on teams' tendencies from a refereeing perspective. For example, if one player often travels or sets screens illegally in a certain way, the referees could be on the lookout for such violations. But, as Bantom points out, "handing referees specific data about specific teams is a little bit risky because you run the possibility that it could influence how they call the game right things that they're looking for, instead of judging what they see on the floor as it occurs." But they're trying to find a balance: "We're considering how we can provide more data to our teams to our referees while being mindful of the fact that we don't want to have any undue influence on how the game is being called."

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