Poor Man's Commish » referees

The “Riel” first Asian-American in the NBA: a referee!

poormanscommish — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 17:07:00 +0000

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!

The word Asian-American is a broad term, but the younger, fully-Americanized, likely speaking-English-at-the-home generation knows who we are. We’re the sons and daughters of our immigrant parents. If we weren’t born here, we certainly were brought up here. We hang out with other guys and gals just like us, and we communicate with each other in English, we adapt to the cultures around us, the ballers among us are even well-versed in the African-American vernacular. We’re pretty far removed from our Asian ancestry, for better or for worse. We probably couldn’t name the last two leaders of our ancestral countries, but we certainly remember Bush and Clinton.

Guess what, one of us made it to the Big Show. Sure, Riel was a replacement ref, but he belonged. He was hand-picked by NBA brass. And there he was, all 100% Filipino, 100% Asian-American, running up and down the court in a game between the Phoenix Suns and Partizan Belgrade, an official NBA preseason game.

I know that Erik Spoelstra is “Filipino-American” and Rex Walters is 50% Japanese, while Derrick Low is Hawaiian-Chinese or what have you (apologies if I’m wrong on any of those). And there was Wat Misaka, but that was even before there was an NBA and I’m sure that even if Misaka’s days were more fraught with racial overtones, it’s hard to compare that with modern-day contexts. With no disrespect to the Asian-Americans out there who are not 100% of one Asian ethnicity, but it’s just that slight tad difference that means so much. That we empathize with.

You know how it goes. You’re 100% Chinese or you’re 100% Filipino or you’re 50% Japanese and 50% Chinese or likewise, and you grew up in a household rich with that 100% ancestral culture. Probably as a teenager and in a huge argument with your parents, your Asian culture embedded in your DNA clashed head-on with the glitz and glamour of being a free American citizen.

To this day, you’re too embarrassed to speak your own native language that your parents at one point hoped you would carry on before reality set in. At the same time, you feel different when you represent the clear minority race at some social function with Latinos, blacks, and/or whites. In short, you might not feel like you have an identity, because you’re not quite either one. You’re the crossover.

It’s that thing that bothers you when a newspaper classifies you as Chinese-American when you’d rather be known as Asian-American. After all, you wouldn’t call the black guy over there Kenyan-American right off the bat, would you? He’s African-American, aka “black”. He, like you with your roots, probably hasn’t even touched the soil of his ancestral continent.

And all those habits of your ancestors. Sometimes it’s frustrating when they act soooo… well, like how your people are supposed to act, with those ridiculous inflections of the speech and horribly flawed accents. Yet when Shaq makes fun of how your relatives back in the homeland speak, it pisses you off and you’ll defend your ethnicity with all your heart and soul.

So that’s what I mean when Riel Banaria became the first to make it to the NBA. You should be proud. He’s the one and only.

Riel Banaria in a discussion with Utah Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan.

Riel got his first break in the NBA Vegas Summer League a few years back. Then he got his dream job. A well-paid, expenses-paid with crib included, stint with the KBL in Seoul, South Korea. He told me it was like living in upper Manhattan. It was posh. It was a good life. His kids were going to be raised there.

After the first full season, the KBL unexpectedly cut him, citing financial casualties. Riel was back in Vegas, starting over. He was even still handling the logistics of the KBL tryouts, which were sponsored by the teams (not so much the league). There was even speculation that the NBA was thinking he might be a good fit to go help out when NBA China was ready. Who knows. But nothing really became available until the NBA needed replacement refs. Now, he’s like the other replacements. Waiting for that second shot. Just a crack in the doorway.

Riel referees and assigns referees at Dream League’s major tournaments in Las Vegas. He’s a stickler for getting things right, and I love that about him. That’s what we want with a ref. Although he can be a little too stubborn in his ways sometimes, but that’s how it goes in Dream League.

He’s a decent player himself, too. As intense as he is a referee.

I don’t really like doing interviews, so in lieu of that I’ll just give you a memory dump. My favorite argument with him came in one of our first Vegas tournaments when he was both reffing and playing (but not at the same time, of course!). Dream League was a fledgling at the time and still growing into its own adoption of NBA rules. Of course, Riel already knew these rules. So when, on behalf of the team he captained, he picked the bench to the left of the scorekeeper’s table, he fully expected to be warming up on the same side, positioning his team to face the scoreboard in the 2nd half.

But I didn’t know the rule and, at the time, didn’t really want to burden myself on such trivial decisions. I just let nature takes its course. And nature was as follows: everyone just assumed you warmed up the side opposite your bench, like in college. Honestly, I didn’t care at the time, but these little things, I do now, if I’m asked to make the proper decision on it. Incidentally, the away team decides which basket it wants to defend, so there’s your official NBA rule. It literally takes years of practice for obscure rules like this to sink in.

I still feel bad Riel didn’t get his fair decision on that at the time. He was right, you know.

His refereeing style on the court is what the NBA is looking for: assertive, yet amenable to discussions. Quick to put two and two together and come up with a logical explanation. And he preaches to all his referees: you run! That’s basketball.

Next time you’re playing a Dream League tournament in Vegas, recognize that you’ve got it good.

Hats off to the trail blazer. You’re not quite there yet, but we’re behind you. We’ll be there when you get there, too.You might also like:

I believe in 0.3

poormanscommish — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 20:57:40 +0000

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.

I’m pretty sure it was Kato Pierce who made the game-winning shot with 0.3 left in our Dream League game. We were over at Potrero Hill Rec Center and Kato’s team was down by 1. The scoreboard at Potrero doesn’t show tenths of a second, but at the time, the scoreboard control panel was still capable of showing it (the box has since undergone various repairs, so who knows if it still displays as it did before).

So when the ball went out of bounds baseline and the game clock showed zeros although the buzzer hadn’t sounded, with me working the table, I told everyone that there were 0.3 seconds per the scoreboard panel display.

Kato’s team drew up a smart play. Basically they had the ball out of bounds baseline under the basket, to the left if you are facing the basket. It’s all kind of a blur, but the play had Kato somehow get open on the opposite baseline area, and he drained a fifteen-foot jumper to win the game.

That’s when I became convinced that the 0.3 rule was the correct rule.

There’s some debate by Henry Abbott on TrueHoop that it takes the same 0.3 seconds for a human being to react to a play, but let me tell you how you’re supposed to operate the scoreboard in this instance. Now, the official rule is that the clock starts once someone on the court (inbounds, of course) touches the ball after being inbounded. But as the scoreboard operator with only 0.3 left on the clock, you can’t wait for a player to touch it, then start the clock. You have to anticipate it. You watch the play, you watch the flight of the ball, and you time it to start right when the recipient of the pass gets the ball. I don’t think there’s any other way, literally on Earth, to do it.

This method is certainly prone to mistakes. The most common error is when a defender deflects the ball. If this happens, I can assure you that you will be at least 0.3 seconds off because, not only as Abbott’s “experts” purport, but also from personal experience, it takes at least that much time for you to react to the deflection.

Someday there will be a controversial play in the NBA in which there’s, let’s say, 0.4 seconds left, someone inbounds it, a defender deflects it (just a slight tip!), the clock does not start right at that moment because that is humanly impossible, and the inbounder’s teammate drains a shot before the red lights on the backboard flash.

Replay wouldn’t necessarily solve the problem because the clock wouldn’t have started until about 0.3 seconds after the deflection. So then the refs would have multiple issues to deal with in making their on-court decision in front of thousands of onlookers. Even if they take that into account, then you’ve got to mathematically estimate if the player still got the shot off in time, an impossible task for a ref. Therefore, the refs would then revert to the video (which is inaccurate in the first place because, again, the clock didn’t start on time) and they would declare the shot good when, in fact, there’s a chance that the shot really didn’t get off in time. The losing team would then file a protest and then-Commissioner Adam Silver would be faced with a difficult decision.

Yet a third error that could occur, assuming the scoreboard operator anticipates the reception of the ball inbounded, is on a free throw. The ball clangs off the rim and is essentially up for grabs. Maybe two players accidentally bump each other trying to reach for the ball and end up not touching it. The scoreboard operator actually starts the clock too early in this example.

I’ve done this before. In fact, it was another Open League game many years ago when Maurice Brown was at the line with less than 1 second remaining, probably somewhere between 0.6 and 0.9 seconds, down by two points. So everyone in the gym knew he was going to miss on purpose, which he did, but in anticipation of the miss, I accidentally started the clock right when the ball hit the rim! Good intentions, very bad result. So the buzzer sounded maybe 0.1 or 0.2 seconds after hitting the rim, everyone knew it shouldn’t have sounded until after when it did, but no one on Brown’s team rebounded it for a putback. Everyone played through the gaffe as if there were no buzzer, so that’s how we decided it. Had someone on Brown’s team rebounded it and made a putback, we probably would’ve counted it. From that day forward, I vowed never to screw up a free throw clock start with only a few ticks left on the clock.

Which brings us back to last night in Chicago. Remember, Miller had 0.3 seconds to shoot the ball only because, in the previous play, Chauncey Billups purposely missed a free throw with 0.6 seconds left. Incidentally, it could even be debated that the play before that ought to be analyzed to see if Billups actually got fouled with 0.6 remaining.

In any case, if you look at the replay of the free throw rebound, first of all you’ll see that the initial scoreboard operation had time expiring. In the scrum for the rebound, it’s really hard to tell when you should stop the clock. In fact, if you look at the replay, with 0.3 seconds left, the rebounder (I think it was Joakim Noah) is still in the air coming down from his jump! That suggests that there should have been less than 0.3 seconds remaining on the next play.

However, I’m in favor of the refs merely subtracting 0.3 seconds from 0.6 to give Chicago the timeout and the ensuing inbounds in the frontcourt. I don’t think a player necessarily has to land before he gets the timeout granted.

All in all, after closely analyzing the highlights and hitting the mouse button on my computer to pause and frame-by-frame advance the video as carefully as I could, I believe the clock was started and stopped, on those two plays (the Billups free throw and Miller’s shot), with near perfection. And by the way, it has been confirmed to me by not only the Warriors scoreboard operator, but also our NBA replacement refs, that in “crunch time” it’s actually one of the referees who starts the clock using a remote control device attached to their waist!

So in conclusion, since Dream League does not have instant replay, in Dream League Brad Miller’s shot counts and the Chicago Bulls win. I’m no longer convinced that Kato really got his 0.3-seconds-left shot in time years ago, either.

Not to mention, it’s very difficult to remind all Dream League refs that 0.3 is, indeed, the rule. Even for free throw rebounds, to automatically subtract that 0.3. Even though I tell my crews to text me on the spot if something weird, urgent, or game-changing comes up, often times they simply don’t. They either just decide that they can handle the situation themselves or they forget I’m available as a resource even if I’m not there.

Interestingly, the 0.3 rule kind of took away some excitement from the Chicago-Denver game, whereas in Dream League, the result would’ve been, oh, more “down to earth”. But I’m still a believer in 0.3 because it’s the right play. That’s why I’m a stickler for tenths-of-a-second on any of Dream League’s gym’s scoreboards. It’s a huge pet peeve of mine.

I also think that having the tenths-of-a-second display adds drama and excitement. Just seeing that hurried, fast-moving, unreadable-until-it-stops digit in the waning, crucial moments of your game, that automatically raises your blood pressure!

So to answer Abbott (as I often do, in disagreement!), if you’re going to have tenths-of-a-second on your clock, then you better go the whole nine yards with it.

Also, I would recommend that the NBA review all play starts and stops, in the fourth quarter and overtimes, of plays with 0.9 seconds remaining or less and the game within reach of one possession of either team. This means Billups’s foul should have been reviewed as far as the clock is concerned. We’re only talking ten to twenty advances of the video frame and in, quite frankly, very rare circumstances.You might also like:

3 Dream League refs are on ESPN, get between Odom/Birdman scuffle

poormanscommish — Sat, 24 Oct 2009 15:36:55 +0000

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.

Meanwhile, Deldre and Jim rushed to the scene and headed off Sasha Vujacic, Luke Walton, and Andersen. Kenyon Martin soon entered the fray near Tre and Odom, but cooler heads prevailed.

Mind you, Deldre, Tre, and Jim are not small human beings. Jim’s 6′4″, Deldre’s around 6′3″ or 6′4″, and Tre’s about 6′2″. All three of them are ripped and in top athletic condition, which may be one reason why they were staffed on this game together, knowing the testy history between the two teams and the volatility of their players. Believe me, someone at the NBA does recognize this stuff.

These guys did a very commendable job and even Jeff Van Gundy was quick to praise them on the air.

There’s no way I can double-check this, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I was the first person ever to live-tweet an NBA broadcast for the sole purpose of commenting on the officiating. I mean, who in their right mind, or outside of the NBA circle for that matter, has ever had such commonality between all three officials assigned to the game? And it being broadcast on national television, no less! Ain’t it weird how it’s the last one they’ll do? I’ll try to do a blogpost on that asap, but this post is dedicated to these guys. And remember the fourth dreamleague ref that made it? Well, he deserves his own post and you’ll see why soon enough as well.

Here’s a transcript of the live-tweet from tonight, in chronological order (oldest tweet first)…

Three of the four dreamleague refs are doing the DEN-LAL game on ESPN!!!

Refs Deldre Carr, Tre Maddox, and Jim Buntin just got props from Van Gundy and Jackson for handling Birdman-Odom scuffle well.

I’m gonna livetweet LAL-DEN from perspective of refs. Biggest reason they handled Birdman-Odom scuffled is cuz the refs are big guys too…

…Jim Buntin is 6′4″, Deldre Carr is 6′3″ and Tre Maddox is 6′2″. They are all pretty ripped and in excellent athletic condition.

Van Gundy criticized Deldre’s elbow call after which Vujacic got 2 flagrant FTs, saying there was no intent. I agree, but…

…as a ref making a split-second decision you cannot take that chance right after a scuffle. Not a good time for the guy to use his elbow.

Ty Lawson just got hammered by Adam Morrison. Absolutely correct call by Jim per slo-mo replay!! ESPN announcer: “I can’t say I disagree.”

Jim made the call quick, huddled up with Del and Tre to confirm what happened. No hesitation. I mean, I am proud of these guys (*sniff*).

George Karl is on Tre’s back about something. Didn’t really see the whole play. Laker tried to save but stepped out of bounds.

Defensive three-seconds call by Deldre. Next time down, Tre correctly notices shotclock didn’t start.

Shtclk violation, but Deldre not quite assertive enuf as Denver got airball reb, started fastbreak. Mighta been Jim’s call nearest reb tho.

Someone on Denver just got called for a tech but the ESPN announcers didn’t mention it. I think Deldre called it.

Artest offensive foul on Afflalo. Called by Tre up top. Van Gundy: “I like how these refs have called the game.”

Van Gundy: “I wonder why they only signed a 2-year deal, maybe see how the recession is? They’ll be back at it soon.”

Btw ESPN announcer (forgot his name) has listed the guys twice now. Funny to hear “James Buntin” all the time since we only call him Jim.

Wet spot on floor, ESPN guys want refs to stop game. Van Gundy says that’s where NBA refs/crew come in handy (this gm not in NBA arena).

Fan ran out w gym broom to wipe wet spot, play went other end. San Diego Arena does have towel boy, he should be fired! ESPN guys chuckle.

Walton just hit a fadaway 7-footer baseline off rebound at buzzer. Good shot slo-mo reply of ref Jim Buntin telling table to count it.

Tre just called and-one against Luke Walton for in restricted area. Good call but it shudda been made by Jim underneath? Maybe bad angle.

Elbow foul on Balkman after rebound, didn’t connect. Tre gets in middle betw Walton, triple checks with Dre. Corect: loss of possession…

Had the elbow connected, I think they changed the rule this year that Balkman would’ve gotten a flagrant (?).

Not ref-related but Van Gundy just said NBA champion would easily win Olympics so why not do it. Apparently forgot Gasol’s from Spain et al

Tre calls foul on Vujacic with 27.1 left and TV close-up of Tre. ESPN guy: “They’ve done a nice job.” Van Gundy: “They *have*.”

Watching SportsCenter now. Good replay of Tre holding off Odom during the scuffle with Birdman…

…That in a nutshell is one crux of the ref lockout. Dick Bavetta couldn’t have done what Tre did. I will blog about this soon.

Thats a wrap for the 3 dreamleague refs who reffed DEN-LAL tonite on ESPN. I’m prolly the only one who’s ever livetweeted an NBA ref view!

As you’ll soon see, good things come in threes!You might also like:

Concrete jungle where Dream League has a tourney

poormanscommish — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 11:34:09 +0000

Shawn Carter puts on the stripes for dreamleague (j/k)

It was about three weeks ago when listening to Hot108.com I heard what sounded like Jay-Z and a booming chorus sung by some lady. A couple quick clicks later from the RealAudio player and it was cool to see the name Alicia Keys. But of course! Empire State Of Mind even got ol’ “golden aged” me wanting to memorize the lyrics of a rap tune for the first time since Check The Rime by A Tribe Called Quest. Got me juiced about coming back to NYC for the 4th annual Gotham Games tournament this December 19-20, 2009 hosted by Dream League New York.

Incidentally, the above is a pic of ref Charles “Stick” Crawford, who appeared at Dream League Bay Area’s Fall-Winter league launch this past Sunday with a new haircut (or lack thereof). I couldn’t believe the resemblance! From now on, we must call him “Stigga”. You know, Stick mashed with Jigga. And get this, Stick’s Stigga’s nickname from the local Oaktown dreamleaguers is none other than “Downtown”. Manhattan = Uptown/Downtown!

So anyways, I can’t believe a critic could call any of Jay-Z’s work “[feeling] dangerously close to rote”! That’s like sitting in a Chicago bistro looking up at a 15″ television bolted just below the ceiling, and seeing Michael Jordan, in only his 4th game back from retirement, light up the Atlanta Hawks for 18 of his 32 points in the 3rd quarter, only to cap it off with a buzzer-beater — and calling that “rote”. Yeah, I was really there in that little Chicago restaurant on March 25, 1995, exactly one week after his return, paying no attention to my food or my company, fixated on that CRT, that small memory etched and treasured in my brain.

(click to view at YouTube)

I mean, after all these years, you can’t fall into that trap of taking greatness for granted. C’mon!

In an old dreamblogue post called The passion of community basketball, via the VH-1 Hip Hop Honors series — the first time I really learned about JZ because during my personal “saturated rap” era I kind of took a break from the genre — I referenced JZ’s passion, hard work, and determination (near the end of the post) in comparison to how the Poor Man’s Commishes out there keep running their tournaments and leagues. Man, JZ’s a role model for us all.

I wish I coulda been there in the studio seeing it all happen. Like watching MJ in practice or shootaround, then putting it all together for real. Can you imagine watching JZ puttin’ work with no pencil and paper needed? Then picture Russell Simmons, Spike Lee, Special Ed, LeBron James, Dwyane Wade, and maybe even Sean Combs hearing this track for the first, second, or third time, chuckling at the shout-outs in the lyrics and feeling some pride in the anthem to the City, shaking their heads in respect during the third verse and saying to themselves, “He’s back and he’s still got it.” I’ll betcha it was like Shaq, Reggie Miller, and Gary Payton watching highlights of his Airness’ buzzer-beater in Atlanta, shaking their heads in respect, and saying, “He’s back and he’s still got it.” Here’s Alicia Keys giving us a tiny bit of an insight…

“I always figured that we would do some type of collaboration, and finally, it came together with this. He reached out to me said, ‘I have this big New York record. I feel its right for us to do it together. It has this big Frank Sinatra, take-it-there feeling. I feel like you could really do something with it.’

“I went by [the studio], took a listen to it,” she continued. “I really felt the energy of New York all through it. It felt classic, it felt so good; the piano obviously was in there. I said, ‘I love it, so let’s do it.’ We communicated a lot during the process. I think we both are really happy with how it came out.”

So, to appreciate a living legend and like dissecting highlights of an MJ classic in slow motion, I hereby present the correct and annotated lyrics of the track that epitomizes the honed and refined skills of a master.

Yeah, I’m out ‘that Brooklyn, now I’m down in Tribeca
right next to DeNiro, but I’ll be hood forever
I’m the new Sinatra and since I made it here
I can make it anywhere, yeah they love me everywhere
I used to cop in Harlem, all of my Dominicanos
right there up on Broadway, brought me back to that McDonald’s
took it to my stash spot, 560 State Street
catch me in the kitchen like a Simmons whipping Pastry
cruising down 8th Street, off-white Lexus
driving so slow, but BK¹ is from Texas
me I’m out ‘that Bed-Stuy, home of that boy Biggie
now I live on Billboard, and I brought my boys with me
say wat up to Ty Ty, still sippin’ Mai Tais
sittin’ courtside, Knicks and Nets give me high fives
n-gga I be Spiked out, I could trip a referee
tell by my attitude that I’m most definitely from

in New York
concrete jungle where dreams are made of
there’s nothing you can’t do
now you’re in New York
these streets will make you feel brand new
big lights will inspire you
let’s hear it for New York, New York, New York

catch me at the X with OG², at a Yankee game
sh-t I made the Yankee hat more famous than a Yankee can
you should know I bleed blue, but I ain’t a crip tho
but I got a gang of n-ggas walking with my clique tho
welcome to the melting pot, corners where we selling rock
Afrika Bambaataa sh-t, home of the hip hop
Yellow cab, Gypsy cab, Dollar cab holla back
for foreigners that ain’t fit they act like they forgot how to act³
eight million stories out there in the naked
city it’s a pity half of y’all won’t make it
me I gotta plug Special Ed “I Got It Made”
if Jesus’ payin’ LeBron, I’m payin’ Dwyane Wade
three dice cee-lo, three card molly
Labor Day parade, rest in peace Bob Marley
Statue of Liberty, long live the World Trade, long live the King⁴ yo
I’m from the Empire State⁵ that’s

[chorus]

⁶lights is blinding, girls need blinders
or they can step out of bounds quick, the sidelines is
blind with casualties who sippin’ life casually
then gradually become worse, don’t bite the apple Eve
caught up in the in-crowd, now you’re in style
and as the winter gets cold, en vogue with your skin out
City of Sin, it’s a pity on a whim
good girls gone bad, the city’s filled with them
Mommy took a bus trip, now she got her bust out
everybody ride her just like a bus route
Hail Mary to the city you’re a virgin
and Jesus can’t save you, life starts when the church ends
came here for school, graduated to the high life
ball players, rap stars addicted to the limelight
MDMA got you feeling like a champion
the city never sleeps better slip you a Ambien

[chorus]

one hand in the air for the big city
street lights, big dreams all looking pretty
no place in the world that can compare
put your lighters in the air, everybody say yeaaahh

[chorus]

See you in the Big Apple a few weeks!

I think this is a reference to the countless number of pickup trucks that speed by you in Beyonce Knowles’ home state of Texas (I once had first-hand experience in Houston at 2006 All-Star).

I think Jigga’s saying that you can spot him accompanied by any OG at any (“X”) event. Then I believe he moves on to a new sentence that actually starts with “At a Yankee game…” he can make a Yankee hat, etc., as opposed to seeing him specifically at a Yankee game with the aforementioned “any OG”. This is significant because Jay is saying that even at a Yankee game, not just in general and with his presence there, he makes the Yankees more famous than the Yankees themselves.

My personal favorite line of the entire track!

In his live performance at the MTV Music Awards, the slide show in the background shows a picture of the outside of the Apollo Theatre with Michael Jackson’s name on it. Speaking of passion, how about the King MJ’s passion? Now that’s a role model to the role models!

Wouldn’t it be funny if Weird Al Yankovic did a parody of this song called Golden State Of Mind, which chronicled the futility of the Warriors?

My favorite verse of the track!You might also like:

4 (four!) of our Dream League refs make it to the NBA

poormanscommish — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 20:10:35 +0000

: CJ Washington, Tre Maddox, and Deldre Carr make history

UPDATE II: Back to FOUR!!! One of the four checked the names that Lamont gave below and could not find them on the roster of replacement NBA refs. Sorry, NYC!

UPDATE: Make that SIX!!! Lamont Long, our head ref in New York, emailed to say that two of his refs have done dreamleague games in DLNY…

One of the guys, his name is Will Mentzer. He has done some dreamleague games in the past. The other guy his name is Bernard Price. Could be wrong on the last name; he also has done some dreamleague games.

You read that right. Not one. Not two. Not three. Four! Four refs who have reffed a substantial number of Dream League games got called up to the NBA as replacement refs last week.

Two of them, Tre Maddox and Deldre Carr (the pic above is from a paused screenshot from NBA.com’s highlight video), got the first pre-season assignment. Not to diss the other two, but Tre and Deldre getting selected to do that very important first game for replacement refs, that was no surprise to me. I was proud as heck to see them get their moment.

And I’m not judging the other two. Matter of fact, if I had one last Dream League game and I needed refs, any random two (or three if we had a budget for 3-man) out of those four, would suffice.

The other two shall be named later and here’s why. While plenty has already been written and photographed about Tre and Deldre (i.e., cat’s out of the bag), the other two would rather stay out of the spotlight. I mean, this is the chance, that sliver of opportunity, that they’ve been waiting for. At the same time, you don’t wanna piss off the other refs that have been there and are going through labor negotiation hell. It’s like you’re damned if do and you’re damned if you don’t. Whatever the case, you’re sure as hell not going to brag about it.

But I will, in terms of the skill level of these guys! I’ve always boiled down success as a Dream League ref in two simple ways: technicality and rapport. All four of these guys get high marks in both categories. Now, to make it to the pro level, you need more facets, but that’s another post for the future.

Another post for the future: why I think these replacements, if they are all similar to these four, will do just fine, and how I know why David Stern wants some of the older ones to retire.

Collectively, these four prodigies reffed Dream League Bay Area league and Las Vegas National Tournament games. In fact, I texted a congratulatory note to one of them and he replied:

Dreamleague was a help in our advancement. Thanks.

.

I know I’ve said this before, but maybe the fact that we use the NBA’s rules, week after week after week, has something to do with it.

I checked the boxscores the other day and found out that Deldre reffed the Utah/Chicago game in London. Lucky bastard!

And guess what, one of them has become the first Asian American to ref an NBA game (sure, it’s pre-season, but it’s still the NBA!). Can you name him? Hint: he’s Filipino.

Eh, I probably just jinxed everything, though. Watch, the NBA and the referees’ union will sign something tomorrow (although, as I said and will write about soon, I don’t think Stern wants that to happen).You might also like: