Monday, September 21st, 2009...10:24 am
A Note on the Referee Lockout
As you very well may know, David Stern has officially locked out the NBA referees, after the referees union rejected the league’s final contract offer late last week. According to the NBA, replacement referees will attend referee training camp this week.
In both the lead up to the lockout and in its wake, the NBA referees and the scab refs who will replace them have taken quite a beating. Basketball referees are some of the least respected in all of sports, although I would argue that basketball games are uniquely difficult to officiate.
Because of the referee’s poor public standing, many fans are happy to see them go. Others, convinced that the current crop of NBA refs is as good as it gets, are concerned about the quality of the replacement referees. I tend to agree with the latter group, and expect many fans to be calling for an end to the lockout once regular season play begins. I’m actually a bit surprised Stern isn’t more concerned that, if the public turns on the replacement refs, the referee union’s bargaining position will be much stronger.
Although both sides have legitimate points, I think we are all missing a crucial element. We have been having a discussion about a game, and the way the allocation of human capital affects the quality of that game. But in a letter to the NBRA’s executive board, Julie Davis, wife of NBA referee Marc Davis, reminds us that for the people involved this is about human beings, not human capital. And it’s about the quality of living, not the quality of play:
The NBA has repeatedly stated that their goal this year is to bring the referees compensation and benefits more in line with the rest of the NBA office employees and its administrative staff. But referees are not office and administrative staff. They do not wake up at home each morning and see their kids off to school before heading to a job from which they get to return home each night, if not for dinner, then to tuck their kids in and kiss them good night. They do not get to sleep in their own beds with their spouses by their sides.
While I don’t know for certain, I would guess that most of the NBA office employees do not miss their kid’s school plays, parent-teacher conferences, sports practices and games, graduations, Christmas mornings, and other holidays. Their husbands and wives do not have to explain to their children each morning and night for 10 months of the year that daddy or mommy will not be coming home again today and won’t be home again for the next ten days either. I can tell you from first-hand experience that three, four and five year olds do not get that concept very well. All of this is not to diminish the value of the NBA office and administrative staff. They obviously play a crucial role in the day-to-day workings of the League. But in reality the jobs of an office worker and an NBA referee are not the same. Comparing the two is not comparing apples to apples, but instead it is trying to make an apple an orange.
I don’t have a concrete stance on the lockout, or a side I unequivocally support. But I always think it’s interesting when the media is having one conversation, and at their dinner tables the actual participants are having another.
14 Comments
September 21st, 2009 at 12:38 pm
“the way the allocation of human capital affects that quality of that game. ”
This is exactly what it’s about. Whether you like it or not, business is about human capital, not human beings. The problem is unions in general. If a referee believes he is underpaid, he or she should be able to negotiate and accept a salary. If he still believes, he’s underpaid, he should leave his job and go find something else. The league can attract the highest talent without having to worry about losing a pool of refs.
Morover, the goal of “referees compensation and benefits more in line with the rest of the NBA office employees and its administrative staff” is ridiculous. People earn differently for the value they create for society. Granted, this is subjective but there’s no need to compare jobs.
We don’t need to raise a veteran’s minimum because Lebron and DWade are going to bring in record contracts this year. In fact, I believe we should get rid of the veteran’s minimum, but that’s the free market economist in me speaking out.
September 21st, 2009 at 12:42 pm
I am so happy with the replacement… Star treatment will reach higher levels this year… or not?
September 21st, 2009 at 1:35 pm
While I think that the current referees are as good as it gets when officiating NBA games, there needs to be some change.
The era of “star calls” and “rookie calls” needs to come to an end. Nobody should have to “earn respect from the referees.” The game should be unbiased to the official.
We also need to see the end of the referee’s ego (I’m pointing at you, Joey Crawford). Nobody is bigger than the game, and that includes referees. If you feel like a player disrespected you, too bad. Your an official and you should restrict your emotion (easier said than done, I know).
I feel like a referee is doing a bad job if I know their name. The ones doing the best job are the guys I see on TV and think, “oh yeah, I remember him, I can’t think of his name, though.”
September 21st, 2009 at 1:44 pm
NL
“The problem is unions in general. If a referee believes he is underpaid, he or she should be able to negotiate and accept a salary. If he still believes, he’s underpaid, he should leave his job and go find something else.”
The problem is, we aren’t talking about the free market. We are talking about a monopoly.
When you are dealing with an organization like the NBA, which is the sole provider of its product, employees whose craft is inextricably tied to the creation of that product have significantly decreased bargaining power on an individual scale.
There is no labor market which he can use as leverage against his employer, because he can’t say, “I’ll just go be a referee for some other professional basketball organzation.” At a certain point, all the talented refs, who deserve a quality salary, would be out of the game entirely, and the overall product would suffer.
In this instance, a union is absolutely necessary, because when you are taking about a monopoly-employee relationship and not a competitive labor marketplace, individual employees have almost no bargaining power.
The fact that, as you point out, the NBA is trying to move the referees’ compensation and benefits more in line with other league employees, even though they are unionized, speaks to how weak their bargaining position already is, much less if they approached negotiations on an individual basis.
The veteran’s minimum (which I believe should exist) strikes me as a slightly different situation, because you have competition on both ends of the spectrum: You have teams competing for a player’s services and players competing against one another. Although the employer pool is artificially limited, the employment dynamics are different than in a monopoly situation.
September 21st, 2009 at 2:13 pm
I’m no fan of NBA officiating, but I’m inclined to side with whoever is against David Stern. The dictator, er commissioner, has been in charge too long and the power has gone to his head. Comparing officials to office employees and administrative staff? Stern is quite the jokester.
September 21st, 2009 at 2:23 pm
Graydon, well put. Free markets, as their names indicate, should work (I say “should” because the idea of free market is mostly what I call “high school economics”) as long as markets are free. Which in this case they obviously aren’t.
I totally agree with the quote, it would be like trying to bring the pilots’ (and air personel) compensation and benefits in line with the ones of people working in marketing for an airline.
And I say this while thinking that the NBA refs could do much better (especially in terms of consistency, but it’s also a NBA problem in general in probably providing them with wrong guidelines) and that a guy like Joey Crawford should have been fired years ago.
September 21st, 2009 at 2:37 pm
I get so into the game of basketball and the NBA that I sometimes forget that this is a business, things like this happen all the time, so I reeally can’t choose a side, just because both sides are doing what they feel they should for “buisness” purposes
I admit that I am slightly relieved that I won’t have to see Joey Crawford anymore. I just hope these replacemnts can step up and do a decent job.
Great article Graydon, I feel much more informed now
September 21st, 2009 at 6:17 pm
I agree that the officiating needs to improve, but it is still unclear to me if the problem with refereeing is that they are under too much influence by Stern, or just the opposite - the refs are a bunch of rogues that can’t be controlled.
The truth is probably somewhere inbetween where there are refs like Bavetta who should have retired long ago but stick around for some inexplicable reason, other than being known as an easily manipulated referee, and refs like Joey Crawford who seem to do things HIS way.
Stern doesn’t seem to have a purist’s love for the game and fixates on aspects like marketing and building new stadiums in a way that infuriates many of the game’s most diehard fans. Until more facts of the dispute are known, I’ll side with the refs (gulp.)
Who’s to say the new breed of refs won’t all be complete puppets? From everything I hear, the refs in baseball aren’t as bound to the control of their commissioner and the quality of the refereeing isn’t as controversial. Anyone with a qualified opinion please chime in…
September 21st, 2009 at 6:50 pm
There might be some organizational differences between the MLB and the NBA but on the field/court, baseball is far less subject to interpretation, excepting strike zones. Basketball is an impossible game to officiate “correctly,” and while I can name a case or two when a ref’s ego gets in the way (heh) I’m inclined to give them some sympathy. The NBA and the NHL have far and away the most difficult travel schedules of any professional sport, especially for refs. I can’t think of too many jobs where you’re required to travel at least every two days. And inevitably, every single ref is going to miss a crucial call, or make the wrong one at the wrong time, and many many people will hate that ref, possibly for an entire career… It’s the referee’s own failure, to be sure, but it’s going to happen. I know I’m rambling here a little, but it’s a tough racket. And while their familiarity with the players can be result in those sketchy rookie/veteran calls mentioned above, it’s also critical to their ability to make the right call. I don’t think replacement refs will necessarily be a disaster, and I’ll be more than pleased not to see some of the more scummy/past-their-days calling games. But I bet it’ll be a little frustrating watching replacement refs blow more calls than the handful per game to which we’re accustomed.
September 21st, 2009 at 7:09 pm
Graydon,
Points well taken and you are right and I am wrong - although I guess professional sports are a monopsony, not a monopoly, because there’s a single buyer, not a single seller, and that does imply that they can buy their service for less than the competitive market price.
I agree that genuine monopsony power is harmful and creates a deadweight loss. I assume the mobility to international labor markets is pretty weak, right?
I just think that without a union, you could probably freeze their salary and you wouldn’t see many refs exit the market. “Fair” or not, we wouldn’t be worrying about lockouts or crowding the possibility for better refs to enter the market - even if they did start at the bottom.
September 21st, 2009 at 9:04 pm
Nick,
Well done pointing out the monopsony/monopoly distinction. When an organization is both the single buyer and the single seller of a product (as the NBA is with basketball) I often, admittedly incorrectly, use monopoly as a catchphrase for both elements of the organization.
I briefly considered international labor markets (i.e. Euroleague) but I came to the same conclusion you did. Currently it strikes me as too much of an imposition for the refs to be treated as an element of leverage for labor.
September 22nd, 2009 at 1:20 am
Nick,
even with a refs union the NBA might be in a position to dictate the compensation package for the refs, but it might not achieve their other implied goal, which is, as you stated in your first post, to “attract the highest talent”.
What the NBA is going to achieve is to attract the “best talent for what they are willing to pay” (like anybody else) and that might just not be enough, which will in turn reduce the value of the overall NBA product (a value that is paramount to the NBA’s interests).
The recent betting scandals (kindly swept under the rug by all the beat writers-they must have got a memo) and the conspiracy theories about fixed games (some more founded than others, obviously) already point to the fact that the NBA is _already_ not attracting the “best” talent (at least in terms of integrity).
Of course we will see how the replacement refs perform, as Graydon noted Stern’s bargaining power could be seriously reduced if they perform badly, but it’s also true of the refs-Stern is basically threatening them that the (cheaper) replacement is just going to be good enough. As Nick pointed out, regardless of the quality of current NBA refs, it’s easier for Stern to find others than for the refs to find another league.
In any case being stingy (in terms of compensation or recognition) with key employees who are themselves working in an environment where money flows freely is a sure recipe for disaster (ask banks, jewelers and so on…)
September 22nd, 2009 at 2:42 am
I can live with blown/missed calls, because as every one has already said, its bound to happen in a game like basketball.
What I can’t live with though are the star/veteran calls. As Andrew said, no one should have to “earn the respect of the refs.” Basketball is a sport, with rules, a foul is a foul no matter who does/receives the act.
Also refs like Joey Crawford need to be dealt with, severely. Getting in a players face and challenging him to a fight or what not should result in major fines/suspensions. However, I also agree that if a player goes overboard on a ref, he should receive like punishment.
June 13th, 2010 at 12:50 am
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