Remind me again why the NBA has chick refs

Of course, calling them "chick refs" negates any edge the hangout might have given you.

 

There are female referees in other male sports as well and there are male referees in female sports.

Last year, the World Cup hired the first female ref in a league dominated by countries with strong feelings about women leaders - i.e. Columbia. That trend began in 1996 at the Olympics with the first female soccer official.

There are only two female officials in the NBA. They were chosen from a pool of NCAA female referees and it was apparently a shock to them. The NBA chooses referees, generally, from men's college refs, but the field was widened to include women in 1995. It is very tough to get a job as an NBA ref to begin with.

There are no women ref's in men's Division I NCAA, however, the first female president of the NCAA was elected in 1991.

As for the grading of Violet Palmer and Dee Kantner, there was a story in SI a year ago that ranked them as solid referees - Kantner a little higher than Palmer. One person said they were better than average and there were a lot of guys who were much worse.

 

cause girls are better.

 

I figure it's because there are some women want to officiate NBA games, and some of them are qualified to do so.

 

Dee Kaetner was reffing a Rocket's game when Barkley was still playing. She made a questionable call and Barkely said something like:

"C'mon, that was a Girl call"

To Kaetner's credit, she laughed.

 

The women's NCAA game and the men's NCAA game are the same in terms of rules. Technically, it should be a harder jump to go from the NCAA PERIOD to the NBA rather than just from women's to men's. I'm not sure what your point is. If they understand the rules, it shouldn't matter what their gender is or who they have officiated. These are basketball players whether they are men or women.

By your standards, how could men possibly officiate women if they had never officiated women before? I'm not sure I follow your logic.

By the way, some refs are now going to the NBDL as well as a training ground.

 

Gotta side with The Freak on his point about the men's vs women's basketball. The men's play is much quicker and more physical even from NCAA men's to WNBA women's. Anyone can memorize rules, but it's the speed of play and the size of the players that is the big factor. Also Dee Kantner and Palmer spent time in the WNBA and I've always felt that Kantner noticably sucked even in that league where most of the officiating is already pretty horrible. Palmer seemed a lot more consistent.

 

Are there particular calls that these women made that offend you? Have you studied their performance compared to the performance of their male colleagues? Or are you just pissed that a woman made it into the all boy's club of NBA refs?

You may as well have said "remind me again why chick doctors are allowed to operate on guys"? After all, they're entirely different, right?

 

Ugh, the non-p.c. card again.

Can someone who defends the asking of this question point to any specific time these referees have made more horrible calls than their male counterparts or times when they haven't been able to keep up with the game because it is too physically demanding? If you can't, and I doubt you will be able to, then there's no reason to wonder why they were hired when they're doing their jobs just as well as the men.

 

Freak: The rules are the same even if the speed and physicality are different. There are short referees. Shouldn't they be left out? There are referees who are overweight? Shouldn't they be left out? There are male coaches coaching pro females. Shouldn't they be ousted in favor of females? After all, how could a man possibly understand girly stuff?

If you have the ability to do a job, you have the ability to do a job. Period. There shouldn't even be a discussion of gender.

You are suggesting that they can't do the job because they never officiated the men's game. Well, by the league's standards, they are holding their own quite nicely and they came right from the women's game. How is that possible if they never officiated men before?

I'm sure it was a PR move, but so what!? In case you hadn't noticed, fifty one percent of the people in the US are female. I can't imagine why the league would want to reach out to women.

If they did it and the female refs sucked, you can bet that they would get ousted quickly. They do a good job and are deserving. End of story.

Timing: I'm a tad surprised that you will argue racism to your grave but sexism has no place in your vocabulary. What's up with that?

 

Isn't it? If you don't have specific complaints about their performance, what exactly IS the point? Why even bring it up in the first place?

If your only complaint is that they are women, then it is no different than saying, "I don't like Steve Francis because he is black."

 

Jeff, Sam, Brian

But what happens if they get pregnant and have to sit out the Finals, just when we need them most.

 

I thought his complaint was their qualifications. Name another NBA ref who has NCAA women's basketball as their highest level of officiating.

Jeff, men's basketball is played at a much higher level than the women's game so your coaching analogy is akin to an NBA ref not being qualified to referee NCAA women's basketball. It's not a man/woman issue, it's a level of basketball issue. You're not going to see anything in NCAA women's basketball that a high school boys basketball referee doesn't see so are high school boys basketball refs now qualified to be NBA refs? How many boys high school refs are promoted to the NBA? Is that a sexist issue too?

 

I have no problem with hiring refs from women's NCAA. Its like drafting a Division II player in the NFL or JUCO guy in the NBA. It happens. The slower speed of the average opponent of the player may make a team more hesitant, but if the talent is there, the talent is there.

I am opposed to hiring women refs for the sake of a quota. I would say men's refs have dealt with a more NBA like environment and it should be weighted accordingly. The projected skill level of officiating at the NBA level matters more than previous experience for a prospective ref.

 

I think TheFreak has a valid point here. Some of you are ragging on him because he doesn't have any specific situations where the women made bad calls, but like he said, that is beside the point. Pretend as if these women were just hired and you have no other means to judge them by other than their previous experience. You can talk about the rulebook, sure, but you have to admit that the game is different from the mens' league to the womens' league. This should be a discussion solely on a person's experience and qualifications to get a job (seems very similar to an Affirmitive Action argument).

Now, while I agree that there probably were more qualified men available to hire over the women who had never reffed a mens' game, I can perfectly understand them hiring them as a PR move. Assuming that a women does an outstanding job reffing in the women's league, it is certainly a safe assumption to assume that they will do very well in the men's league. All that is required would be a little adjustment for the physicality of the play, I think. What I am not understanding is why there are no women refs in the men's NCAA college league. Do women not want to ref in that league? That seems like as good a place for them to break into as any. And if I am mistaken, and there are already women refs at that level, why were they not taken over the refs selected who had not reffed men's basketball?

 

Freak, I didn't brand you as a sexist and didn't mention your use of the word chick. Maybe you're the one who feels a little defensive?

I just wondered why the question was brought up. I don't remember seeing any Asian refs in the NBA or college ranks (could be wrong), but I wouldn't question the NBA's hiring of one, years after the hiring, unless I was disappointed in their subsequent performance. In other words, what precipitated your question?

I agree with you and Jeff that it probably was in part a P.R. move. But they weren't hired solely because they were women: they had prior experience as college refs and, from everything I've heard, they are doing fine as refs and justifying the NBA's hiring of them (if the hires needed justification).

And I don't see anything different about the women's college game versus the men's game that should make it tougher to referee. Yeah, the guys are stronger and play above the rim more, but I don't see how that changes the structure of the official's job: the definition of a foul is the same, traveling is still traveling, etc. etc.