Riel Banaria, first "full" Asian-American in the NBA.

On Tuesday, October 6, 2009, the first full-blooded Asian-American set foot inside the lines on an NBA basketball court, his name permanently etched, as required, in the NBA boxscore archive.

His name? Riel Banaria. His position? No, not point guard. Not 1 thru 5. His role was… ref!
read more from "The “Riel” first Asian-American in the NBA: a referee!"

Brad Miller's shot with 0.3 did not get off in time.

Last night NBA referees negated Brad Miller’s potential buzzer-beating win in the Chicago Bulls’ one-point loss to the Denver Nuggets. You can see in the paused replay above that, in fact, he did not get the shot off in time when the clock showed zeros.

Here’s a rare situation where if it can happen in the NBA, it can never happen in Dream League. In Dream League, Brad Miller’s shot counts and everybody puts it in the Top Ten coolest basketball things they’ve ever participated in. We would’ve never known that the shot really shouldn’t have counted. This brings me back to a similar play in Dream League’s Open League many years ago when the NBA’s 0.3-second rule was first introduced.
read more from "I believe in 0.3"

Tre, Jim, and Deldre break up a scuffle between Nuggets and Lakers on ESPN.

UPDATE: Buntin just texted me:

CRAZY. Broke down game tape til 2am.

Three of our refs: Jim Buntin (Bay Area), Tre Maddox (Vegas), and Deldre Carr (Vegas) happened to be staffed together last night for the Lakers-Nuggets game on ESPN! It was their final night of replacement referee work for the NBA, and boy was it a night to remember. The game was held in San Diego.

Lamar Odom of the Los Angeles Lakers and Chris Andersen (aka “The Birdman”) of the Denver Nuggets got into a scuffle with 8:32 remaining in the 2nd quarter. Tre immediately called a double-technical but soon found himself trying to hold off an angry Odom from an approaching Andersen.
read more from "3 Dream League refs are on ESPN, get between Odom/Birdman scuffle"