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Bennett Salvatore has been an NBA referee for 27 years. Needless to say, he’s seen it all. TGR: Biggest changes you‘ve seen through the years? BS: I think we went through a period maybe 15 years ago when we were a very physical game. And the league has gone to great lengths to make it more of a basketball game. I think that’s a good thing. It’s what the game should be. TGR: Do you ever get complimented on a job you’ve done? BS: Well, sure. Walking off the court, you always get a pat on the back from the team that won. TGR: Do you ever get tired of the abuse? BS: No, I think whenever you get into this profession, even on an amateur level, you have to know going in that that’s the type of game it is. TGR: Before becoming a ref, you had expectations of how you’d be treated. How has that played out? BS: There’s a learning process in becoming a referee. Like our boss Ronnie Nunn says: there are no LeBron James’s in the referee profession. You just don’t walk out to the court and become a star referee. It’s a process, it’s a learning process. And, the bottom line is: it is hard work. TGR: Do you ever hang out with any of the players or coaches? BS: Never. Never. TGR: You see them at a bar and you’re walking the other way? BS: Absolutely. That’s a rule, there is absolutely no fraternization. Common courtesy, politeness, OK. You see someone in a restaurant, of course you’re going to say hello. But you’re not going to sit down and eat with them. TGR: Any rule changes that have helped your profession? BS: The elimination of the illegal defense. Which was a very complicated rule for a referee to call, because there was so much fluid action going on on the court. The elimination of that, and the implementation of the defensive three seconds I think is better for all parties involved. TGR: Because that’s pretty easy to call. BS: It is. But it’s also accomplished what the league set out to do: to give a freedom of movement to the game. And that certainly has come forth, and it’s shown in the higher scoring. TGR: Do you ever catch yourself reffing in real life? BS: Not so much in a personal type of thing. But certainly, I have four children. All who are pretty athletic, and I would go to the little league games and high school games and the college games. And I learned early on, when they were playing young-timer’s basketball, little league and Pop Warner, to stay away from the main fan base: the parents. Because, what would happen would be, an umpire would make a call and everyone would turn around to see what my reaction would be. And, I’m over here, saying: “This poor guy is out here trying to make six dollars a night. Leave the guy alone.” So, I learned early that I had to go watch the games from center field. TGR: With a hat and dark shades? Incognito Dad? BS: Yeah. Kind of. You’d be surprised. I’ll tell you a story about my daughter. One time she was playing softball, 10-years-old. So I go to the game and they’ve got nobody there to umpire and they ask me to. I didn’t want to do it. But, it’s “we can’t play the game unless we have an umpire.” So I say, OK, I’ll do it. Bottom line, God’s honest truth: my daughter is up, two outs in the last inning, her team down by one run with the bases loaded and the count is three-two on her. And I’m the umpire behind the plate. TGR: And what are you feeling inside at that moment? BS: The only feeling I had is I didn’t want to be there. Of course, the next pitch is close. I call her out, strike three. With tears in her eyes, she turns around to me and says: “Dad, that was a ball.” Well, needless to say, her and my wife didn’t speak to me for two weeks. TGR: And the moral of the story is always swing at a full count. BS: I swore, I would never do an amateur game again. And I haven’t. TGR: Tell us about life on the road. Does that get lonely? BS: The travel is really the toughest part of the job. Since 9-11, with all the security parameters now, where years ago, we used to get on a flight five minutes before it left. You’ve gotta be there an hour and a half, two hours before the flight leaves today. It doesn’t sound like much, until you’re traveling almost every day. And there are a lot of times that you’re away from home for the holidays, or your kids birthdays, or a wedding. And that’s not fun on my side, for missing it. TGR: And what do you do on the road? BS: A lot of the referees are movie buffs. Some of our guys are soap opera guys. You fill your time in different ways. I’m a movie buff. I love movies. I’m mostly a cowboy/army guy. I like the action films. TGR: Anything else? BS: The computer can fill a lot of time, too. When you talk how things have changed over 27 years. Well, with the advent of the computer, we have become much more involved administratively. We have our own website for the league. We have to log on twice a day. The reason being is: they will take web plays, they will download plays from the night before that have happened throughout the league, and they will give their ruling on it. Ya know, it’s a training process, on how to bring the referees close together in what they call. We have weekly tests that we take. TGR: You have weekly tests? BS: Absolutely. You have no idea the accountability and the scrutiny that we’re under. TGR: What kind of tests? BS: Rule tests. TGR: Still, after 27 years you have to do this? BS: Yeah, but that’s a good thing. That’s not a bad thing. Rules are a very, very big part of our job. We go over rules on a daily basis. We may be tested on a weekly basis. But there isn’t a referee that doesn’t open up his rule book on a daily basis. That’s our bible. TGR: How many questions are on these tests? BS: There’s not a lot during the week. There may 5 to 10 questions on a test. What happens is we have web plays every day. And the web play will either be a direct answer from the weekly test, or it’ll be what we call a quick hair play. They will ask us how we would have called this play. In other words, they’ll show the play, and then they’ll ask us, again, more of a stimulation type of thing to see where the mindset of the staff is. And it is a tremendous training guide. TGR: Take us through the rest of your work day. BS: We have a meeting at eleven o’clock every morning. The referees who are going to do the game that night. And we will go over everything that we possibly can. We’ll talk about post-up, we’ll talk about our mechanics, on how we run the court, and where we are supposed to be positioned. And then, after the game, we have people at each arena that chart every call we make. In other words, at the 3:22 mark of the third quarter, Bennett called a travel. And then we have to review the game, and put down whether we made a correct call or incorrect call. Now, that helps in a couple ways. It’s great for self-evaluation, but it’s also good for our office, to look at our own critiques to see what we’re thinking on these plays. Perhaps, Bennett is calling a certain play, not the way the office wants him to call it. So, if they see a pattern, I’m going to get a phone call from either Ronnie Nunn, the director of officials, or one of our group supervisors. TGR: How many of those phone calls do you get a year? BS: You know, it depends. It could be a couple a month. You know, maybe I’m having a good month. But that fluctuates. Also, and I didn’t even mention this. Besides the person that does the charting, we have an observer at each game that observes our performances and critiques our performances. And then, our group supervisor cross checks the report by the observer. TGR: There’s a lot of scrutiny there. BS: There is. The accountability is incredible. TGR: Does that put a lot of pressure on you? BS: Again, it’s how you take it. For me, it’s not pressure, it’s a means of getting better. And a means of learning. And, I think, most of the guys take it like that. There’s no profession, that I know of, that there aren’t bosses and supervisors that rate you, and judge you, we’re no different. And we shouldn’t be different. We should be accountable for what we do. * Recommended reading: Lakers Towel Man tells all |
