Larry Brown, Replacement Refs Don't Mix

An hour before the Phoenix Suns were set to play their first preseason game of the year, I asked the team's head coach, Alvin Gentry, how he felt about the prospect of replacement referees calling the games. His response?

"You think I'm touching that one?" Gentry joked. "You want to see the memo I got from the league?"

Actually, I did, but he didn't have it handy. The point was, replacement referees are a touchy subject, and complaints about them were supposed to be kept to the bare minimum by team personnel.

Apparently, Larry Brown didn't get the memo. Because he flipped out and was ejected by the replacement refs during his Bobcats' preseason game Monday night against the Atlanta Hawks.

Brown had enough with just over three minutes to play in the third quarter, when a referee asked security to escort him from the floor after a second technical foul for arguing one of the 61 fouls that were called on the night. That's the funny part, actually -- Brown, being a veteran coach who has been thrown out of plenty of games in his career, left on his own accord, and didn't need a security guard to show him where the locker room was.

But this doesn't erase the fact that the league is going to have a real problem on its hands the longer the replacement officials are allowed to call these games. While they're certainly adhering to the rule book and, for the most part, calling the game by the letter of the law, the replacements are almost definitely violating the spirit of the law, by killing any flow at all by not knowing when to make a call, and when to allow play to continue without a whistle.

There's a rhythm to NBA basketball, and for as much scrutiny that's given to the officiating, it's truly an art to try and call the games evenly for both sides, while still making sure that all of the rules are sufficiently enforced.

It's clear that the replacement officials were instructed to simply call everything, but it's equally clear that this isn't the best way for the referees to run a professional basketball game.

The best solution for everyone would be for David Stern to come to his senses, and give the referees' union the relatively small concessions it's seeking before the start of the regular season. If that can't be accomplished, then he at least needs to tell the replacement officials to loosen up a bit, and allow the game to be played as it was intended, and not with multiple whistles being blown for every minute of game action that we're seeing on the court.