Replacement referees again? Please… don’t do that to us again
ESPN’s Marc Stein is reporting that the league and its game officials are far apart in negotiations and that the contract between them runs out in a week. According to Marc, the league is seeking a 10 percent, across-the-board, pay cut for its officials.
Perhaps that’s just a bargaining position, but if it’s for real, it’s idiotic. You could add up the salaries for all 60-plus officials in the league and they wouldn’t add up to the salary of a decent, veteran player in the league. And what the officials have to put up with these days is so worthy of a respectable wage.
Their travel is a nightmare — remember, these guys don’t have a “home” city, every game they work is a road game. They are scrutinized like never before and seem to have less power with every season. It’s a physical and mental grind and I can’t believe the league wouldn’t want to at least treat them well enough to make up for the difficulties of their job.
And, like most fans, you probably think they all stink. I hear it all the time. But just wait until you see the replacement referees. They’re worse than college referees, if that’s possible. We’ve gone down that road in the past, the last time in 1995 and it was a complete joke.
There are times to play hardball in negotiations — and I realize the league just might be setting a tone for the tougher dealings to come with the players association — but this isn’t one of those times. Pay the men graciously and with courtesy. They are at the core of the league’s credibility and integrity. You mess with that and you have problems you can’t repair with a blank check.
NBA | Dwight Jaynes | August 26, 2009
for all the bitching, whinning, and complaining (most of it legitimate), we do NOT want replacment officials doing the NBA games…period. although the regular refs do leave something to be desired and their calls need to be more standardized so that all of the players get the same treatment and so that all of the infractions are seen and called the same way by the refs, replacement officials would be the bane of the league and would cost teams losses that could be devestating to their positions in their respective conferences and in their playoff seating. these guys are far more deserving of the big bucks than most of the players themselves. while the teams stay in better hotels than most of us can afford on our vacations or business trips, fly in coporate or private jets fully catered with the best of everything, officials are forced to stay in mediocre rooms, and fly business class commercial. they rack up more travel time and miles than the teams do and take more abuse and work longer hours than any of the players. why would the league play this kind of game with these guys… and gal (sorry violet) when their skills and expertise are needed? with the experience that we had in 95 with the replacement crews i wouldnt think the league would want to go thru that again…much less the fans. pay em and give em a great benie’s package and lets move on to the start of the season.
I disagree, Dwight. Officiating in the NBA is a blight. It is horribly inconsistent. And I’m not talking about missed calls. I’m talking about not calling travel, three seconds in the lane, and letting stars get away with almost anything.
I agree the college refs are inferior to the NBA refs. But at least college refs are consistent in their calls. And I would take that over what we currently have.
Thats the problem with jobs such as the NBA. How do you set a market wage for officials? It’s not like working at any company where you can compare wages with other companies to see what the fair market wage is. The NBA is the only professional basketball league in town, so there is nothing to compare it to.
I’d have to reserve judgement until I knew excatly what their current wages are. It seems to ask policeman and firefighters to take wage cuts in this economy, and then say the NBA officials are sacred is a skew in priorites.
Besides, don’t they make enough in kickbacks from thier Vegas (and soon to be Delaware) friends?
jeremy nba officials make on an average about $128,000.00 per year. they have to pay for their travel and hotel but do get a daily stipend for meals and transportation to and from games and meals. it costs refs roughly about $55,000.00 in travel insurance, air fare and hotels. this leaves them about $73000.00 per year before taxes. that is roughly what a tenured policeman in a large market makes per year. you pay the police and firefighters but the league and teams pay the officials so your money does nothing to support them. also, (i don’t know for positive) i would estimate that very few officials have an “in” for kickbacks in vegas or delaware for that matter especially after the fiasco with crooked officials in the last couple of years. the risks are just to great for both the officials and the peeps in vegas, reno, atlantic city, oh and of course soon to be delaware.
Yeah but policeman and firefighters work year round.
My point is not who “deserves” money more. My only point that in a monopoly, such as the NBA, it is very difficult to determine what a fair market wage is.
I think Dwights larger point was that the salary of officials is a tiny drop in the bucket compared to players, and I understand that. However, ALL the pro sports leagues are raising prices much faster than US incomes, and eventually that will have to change.
Tom,
I’m not familiar with their salary structure but there is no way that your “net of expenses” number is correct. If that were the case then they would never be able to employ a ref (especially a newer ref with a lower salary).
I would guess that their transportation allowance is sufficient to cover meals, cabs/car rental, hotel, and airfare.
$128k is not bad for a partial year position, albeit a very challenging one (mentally and physically).
Guys… a couple of things… college referees are consistent in their calls? NO referees are consistent in their calls… they’re human. It just doesn’t work that all humans call games the same. You have to live with that. And seriously, policemen and firefighters have nothing to do with salaries of basketball referees. There isn’t some guy sitting in Washington deciding what we’re all paid. It’s not going to be consistent from business to business. You remind me of the people who think teachers should be paid more than NBA players. Well, as soon as they start putting teachers on television all the time, they will be. Referees’ salaries don’t come from your taxes, OK?
It doesn’t come from taxes, it comes from ME!And teachers and firefighters! And steel workers, and even journalists. It comes from the fans, who have to pay crazy amounts of money to fuel pro sports salaries because they have a monopoly on the market and can charge any amount of money they want.
You act like the pro sports have a magic pot of money that they pay salaries from. It comes from the fans who are struggling everyday and put their hard earned dollars towards supporting their teams. Frankly, I think the NBA should be supported for trying to draw a line on salaries. Pro sports prices are growing at many multiples of US incomes – they are on an unsustainable path. I’d like to take my kids to a ballgame someday (when I have kids) but at this rate I’ll have to take out a loan to do so.
the best way to put a halt to pro salaries is to, as a sports nation, stop going to the games and stop watching them on t.v or listening to them on the radio. its a no brainer if you can convince every sports fan in the nation to stop supporting sports in every way shap and form then they will go out of business…im sure that will make you happy. also, i guess, in a round about way you do pay for the refs salaries by supporting your local team but literally fractions of pennies that you spend at the games and for parafinalia go to officials salaries. just like you pay for the salary for the checker at the grocery store, or the grumpy gas station attendant that spills gas all down your car when you fill up. it just proves that what goes around comes around. if youre gonna have sports then youre gonna have large salaries as we as a species hold up these kind of people as heros and are willing to pay them whatever they want. not much different than the knights or explorers of yesteryear. if the king or queen wanted them to do something they had to poney up the funds or nothing got done… its no different today.
And here’s how much I don’t walk the talk – I just shelled out $280 bucks to see Yankees/Tampa Bay in the Bronx in two weeks.
When it comes to sports, normal supply and demand breaks down a little. Free market pricing relies on fair and free competition (which for pro sports there is none) and rational behavior of the consumer. (Which for many real sports fans, passion will win over rationaity anyday.)
If anyone thinks that what people are willing to pay is always the fair price, they missed one of the larger lessons of the housing bubble.
If that $128K figure is accurate – along with the expenses they have to pay – it seems to me that the leaque is getting a pretty good deal. I would have figured their salary was about 2X that. This seems like a silly place for the NBA to be pushing to cut expenses. 10 percent of $128K times the # of refs doesn’t add up to much at all. They are not the ones making millions. The possible consequences outweigh any possible benefit.
$128,000.00 is an average. some make more because of tenure (@ $225,000 for 20+ years) and some make less starting at about $65-70,000.00 but still that makes the nba ref a major bargain. baseball umpires make less money and nfl refs make a little less because of the larger crews in those particular games. for verifacation on this you can go to google and research it. there are many articles that relate to officials salaries.
Jeremy… man, that’s SILLY!!!! nobody makes you go to games. Don’t go if it bothers you. But ticket prices aren’t based on salaries of players or referees. They’re based on what people are willing to pay. As we’ve seen, when people stop buying — just like anything else — the prices come down. As long as they’re willing to pay, those prices are “right and proper.” And no, they can’t charge “any amount of money they want.” Do you know anything about business? At some point, people won’t buy the tickets. Then they drop. But if you want to blame somebody for the high price of tickets, blame yourself — you keep buying them!!!
Fine, I’ll just take my money and go to the other Professional Basketball league and watch games there! I’d I’ll root for that other Portland Trailblazers team thats in Portland.
Wait… oh yeah.
And if you want to get personal, yes, I do know something about business. I have an advanced degree in both Business and Finance, run a succesful one ( in face its so succesful that I have time to spend arguing on sports forums duriong the middle of the day
) and if you like at your next gathering we can talk all about behavorial pricing and how monopolies skew normal pricing curves.
The one thing they didn’t teach me in Business school was how to spell and type worth a damn!
Jeremy,
Just because there is no competition, doesn’t mean you are forced to buy tickets to games. Watching sporting events is a luxury.
It’s not like every Blazer fan is forced to pay whatever price the blazers charge for tickets, just because there is no other team in town. Any one at any time can say, “you know what, I love the blazers to death, but $200 a ticket is too much, so I’m going to go play golf instead.”
We’ve seen it happen here when the team sucked. People were pissed and they stopped buying tickets. No one is getting forced to buy the tickets just because the NBA has a monopoly.
Sure, if we had 2 professional basketball teams in town, then the prices might be lowered in the name of competition, but you would probably agree with me that neither would become sustainable businesses (most NBA teams aren’t right now) and therefore the free market would eventually put one or both out of business and we would be right back to where we are now.
As far as I am concerned, the NBA system we have now came out of the free market. Unless you believe the gov’t should come in and break up the NBA and divide it into smaller companies. I’m not sure what change you would realistically like to see.
Marc,
I don’t promote breaking up the NBA. My only point is that you can’t apply free market principles to a monopoly and then say that it proves proper pricing.
Hell, even the actual free market doesn’t always price things right. Look at housing prices, dot com stock,and the mid 90′s beanie babie craze. ( No joke my neighbor bought 1000 swearing he would make a killing).
Jeremy — You are throwing that “monopoly” thing around way too freely. The NBA certainly doesn’t own a monopoly on sports — in fact, it’s a tiny segment of sports. It doesn’t even own a monopoly on basketball, which the colleges still own more than pros. There are many Hoop Nuts who don’t watch the NBA. By your standards, Ford has a monopoly, because if you want a Mustang, that’s the only company you can buy it from. Step back a little and check yourself.
Should I check myself before I wreck myself?
Thats very hip-hop of you Dwight. You guys are missing my larger point that just because people can or will pay something now, doesn’t mean its sustainable, or even that its the “right and proper” price, as Dwight put it. Especially in markets with “limited competition”. (Is that better?) Housing prices are a recent example of this.
Anyway, Dwight has ruled, not in my favor, and I’ll respect that since its his blog. Consider myself “checked.”
Wow… this thread went sideways quickly!
My two cents… these guys are the best out there. Asking them to take a pay cut, when most people felt they were underpaid anyway is an insult. I’d hate to see all of us fans waiting all summer for our Blazers to suit up for the most anticipated season in years and then watch completely incompetent refs blow significant calls that change the course of games.
I know that the regular NBA refs have their shortcomings, but it’s nothing compared to watching some of the college refs that would be filling in.
(This probably won’t work) If
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Well – didn’t work – was trying to get them all against the right margin… back to work.
If only we had more gambling. The mob doesn’t influence enough refs.
I’m not saying replacement refs will be better than the current NBA refs, we all know they will blow calls. But maybe there would be a silver lining to having them there. Maybe you will start seeing less “star calls” as the replacement refs try to prove that they are working to improve the game. Yes, Brandon Roy will be affected by this and likely get called for more travels than he has in years past. But so will Kobe and Lebron. Kobe and Lebron travel???? NEVER!!! Or better yet, Shaq may have actually been called for a flagrant when he decided to use Pryz’s head as the ball and bounce it off the floor. We may find out that some of the super stars in the league are more human than we have been lead to believe.
Things are tough all over Dwight. Why should it be any different for the NBA refs?
I agree it is a hard and often thankless job, but at the same time nobody is pointing a gun at their head or holding them prisoner
Baseball teams are losing money by the bundle. Many NBA teams (including ours) lost money last year. Salary cap is going down and we are in a serious economic times.
Considering the circumstances, I think the NBA is being more than fair