{Fox Sports} Bavetta has history of bad calls

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Bavetta has a history of blown calls

The footage is grainy, but the evidence is clear.
It's Feb. 25, 1977 and Pete Maravich is on his way to scoring a career-high 68 points in a 124-107 Jazz win over the Knicks before 11,033 fans in the cavernous Superdome.
Midway through the fourth quarter, with Maravich sitting on 61 points, the Pistol beats Ticky Burden on a drive to the basket and Knicks forward Tom McMillen slides over to help. The future congressman gets there a step late and collides with Maravich as the league's leading scorer converts the bucket for what should be points 62 and 63.


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The whistle blows, and one assumes Pistol Pete will be going to the line to complete the three-point play. That would give him 64 and a great shot at becoming only the third player to that point in NBA history - after Wilt Chamberlain and Elgin Baylor - to score 70 points in a game.

But no. The referee has waved off the basket and mistakenly, erringly, astonishingly called a charge, saddling Maravich with his fifth foul.

The superstar is having a historic game at home and the official makes a terrible call against him? What kind of ref would do such a thing?

Sadly, the answer probably won't surprise most NBA fans.

Dick Bavetta.

Yes, the current dean of NBA referees was in his second season in the league and already ruining things.

Was he already "Knick" Bavetta way back then?

After watching the replay several times, I turn to the owner of the grainy game tape — Maravich biographer Wayne Federman — and point out that it's hardly the worst call Bavetta has made against the Jazz, recalling his itchy-trigger shot-clock violation call on Howard Eisley's 3-pointer in Game 6 of the 1998 Finals.

"Why did you have to remind me of that?" he laments. "And there was no replay back then." Like so many NBA fans, Federman — whose Maravich book comes out in the fall — has grown weary of Bavetta's over-officiating.

We watch the rest of the tape. Maravich gets called for his sixth foul on another charge with 1:18 left (though the call is made by Don Murphy, not Bavetta). It is the only game Maravich fouls out in all season.

It's an odd collection of facts: Maravich achieves his career-high, eclipsing all but the game's two most legendary scorers; he fouls out for the only time that season; Dick Bavetta is one of the two officials.

And here we are, almost 30 years later, still enduring Bavetta imposing his will and his whistle on the game.

Take this past Monday. The Mavericks trail the Spurs by two with 15 seconds to play in regulation. Dirk Nowitzki has the ball up top and begins his move on Bruce Bowen. He works Bowen down to the foul line, where — as the clock moves under 10 seconds — we wait breathlessly to see if one of the game's premier offensive stars can prevail against one of the league's top defensive stoppers.

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Huh? Did something get thrown on the court? Did the clock malfunction? Why are we stopping?

Because Dick Bavetta has seen something. As if equipped with an electron microscope, Bavetta has seen the players' arms brush together and has called a hand-check foul on Bowen. Bowen is disconsolate. And for good reason. Replays show that Nowitzki has initiated the contact, and — beyond that — neither player gained an advantage as a result of the contact.

This would have been a terrible call in the second quarter. But in the closing seconds of a two-point game? Unforgivable.

Nowitzki made the free throws to force overtime and the Mavericks may well beat the Spurs — and possibly win the NBA title — thanks to this ticky-tack call.

I wonder if the generous call was enough to change the opinion of Dallas's Jerry Stackhouse, who once said, "(Bleep) Dick Bavetta. I'm tired of his (bleep). It's like the game is about him."

Earlier in the playoffs, in the Heat-Bulls series, Bavetta waved off a basket by Luol Deng, calling a charge. In Bavetta's mind, Shaquille O'Neal was set. Replays showed it wasn't close; the big battleship was still sliding under Deng as he shot the ball. (But you'll never convince Heat fans that Bavetta favors their team. It was Miami point guard Tim Hardaway, after all, who dubbed the ref "Knick" Bavetta in the 2000 playoffs after a series of questionable calls went New York's way.)

Maybe Bavetta is just a Shaq fan. It wasn't the first time Bavetta's questionable judgment had benefited the Diesel.


Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich isn't too happy with Dick Bavetta here. (LM Otero / Associated Press)

In Game 7 of the 2000 Western Conference Finals against the Trail Blazers, not only do the Lakers shoot 21 more free throws for the game — helping them overcome a 15-point fourth-quarter deficit — but an O'Neal body slam of Steve Smith in the final minute goes unwhistled. The win allows the Lakers to continue on their road to the first of three straight NBA titles. (Imagine how differently the sad saga in Portland might have played out had the Blazers rode Rasheed Wallace and Bonzi Wells to the 2000 title.)

And there's Game 6 of the 2002 conference finals. In what is regarded by many — including everyone in Sacramento — as a low point in NBA officiating history, the Lakers shoot 27 free throws in the fourth quarter to stay alive in their drive to title No. 3. The officiating is viewed as so one-sided that a handful of both Democrats and Republicans in the state legislature in Sacramento call for a review and even Ralph Nader weighs in, writing:

"At a time when the public's confidence is shaken by headlines reporting the breach of trust by corporate executives, it is important, during the public's relaxation time, for there to be maintained a sense of impartiality and professionalism in commercial sports performances. That sense was severely shaken in the now notorious officiating during Game 6 of the Western Conference Finals between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Sacramento Kings."

It's one thing when Tim Hardaway and Jerry Stackhouse condemn your work, but Ralph Nader? Must be Dick Bavetta's officiating is "unsafe at any speed" as Nader once said of the Corvair.

But as the NBA playoffs roll on — and the unfortunate, game-changing calls mount — Bavetta will be right there in the middle of it all.

He'll blow his whistle and come flying out from under the basket as we wait to see if it will be a block or a charge, half-knowing that the call will undoubtedly be contradicted by replay. Bavetta will plant his feet close together, put his hands on his hips and thrust his groin forward in his slightly pornographic signature move. It's a block. (Except, of course, that the defender was set and his heels were three feet outside the circle.)

When he was being profiled as the ABC News Person of the Week earlier this year, Bavetta said, "I've always considered myself as a grade-B actor — someone who is down in the credits, also starring. The players are the stars of the performance, and the game is the performance."

Words to ref by. Too bad Dick Bavetta ignores them