How do you improve PBA officiating?

As the PBA Fiesta conference opens this Sunday, it will be another three months of watching the teams get used to the personnel changes and the imports.

It’s always fascinating to see which imports stay for the long haul or are dismissed for their inability to fit into a coach’s system.

But let’s face it. Officiating will also have its fair share of the limelight with frustrated teams howling to the heavens how life is so unfair and with coaches and players nit-picking almost every call.

From the simplest out-of-bounds decision to the intricacies of charging and blocking, there will always be a bone of contention among the dramatis personae in a game.

You can’t blame the players, coaches and team owners. Everybody wants to win.

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Some say basketball is almost impossible to officiate. It is arguably the most frenetic of sports with the ball changing hands quickly and 10 individuals fighting for position and possession.

Attempts at the basket happen at least twice in every minute of play with a slew of possible violations along the way.

Hank Nichols, once in charge of officials in the US NCAA, said in Last Dance, John Feinstein’s engaging book on the Final Four, that what coaches are begging for is consistency in the way calls are made and discernment at crucial times of the game.

Thus, what the game needs are uncommon men (and women, perhaps in the future) who will referee the game ably in all its complexity.

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This is perhaps the end in mind of PBA commissioner Sonny Barrios during his watch: To have officials with integrity and the skills to officiate the game as best they can, fully aware of the stress on teams to win and the demands of a discerning public.

Barrios is not a wishful dreamer who hopes that walkouts or a critical endgame call will never happen again.

In the PBA pressure cooker of intense competition, anything can be triggered by frustration or perceived unfairness.

Barrios has been in the league long enough to understand how the heat of battle can shape perception on the way the games are called. Talking with him, you sense he does not believe that nothing can be done about officiating.

Barrios is striving to find individuals who will face the challenge of better basketball officiating straight in the eye. He has underscored the fact that his office has been unceasing in holding training programs and post-game evaluations for the refs.

And yet, he remains open to suggestions on how officiating can further improve and be consistent without imposing on the flow and appreciation of the games.

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On that note, let’s begin with personnel. If teams travel far (which includes scouting for Fil-Ams) to look for talent, the PBA has to do its own talent search and not merely rely on walk-in applicants.

So far, the commissioner has warmed up to the idea of doing talent searches in the cities the league will hop to in the upcoming conference.

There are diamonds in the rough among the whistle blowers in the north as well as in the Visayas and Mindanao that are hoping for a chance to do PBA games.

Being a previous player or having ref experience shouldn’t be the main criteria for acceptance, though. Attitude, body language and communication skills should also be of paramount importance.

That’s because the complaining will never really go away. What are needed are refs who can stand the heat and still call the game as best they can.

Source: Sev Sarmenta  | Philippine Daily Inquirer