Game should draw attention, not the refs

Well, we made it through to another tourney week. Great, great, great!

The hoop? Great! The old friends I get to see once a year? Great! The hot dogs? Super-great!

Man, I’m practically giddy with excitement and anticipation. Practically.

But there’s a problem. Hmm. How do I say this without aggravating an entire group of polyester-clad individuals?

(Relax. I’m not talking about your bingo-playing Aunt Myrtle and her four sisters).

I’m talking about … umm … zebras. Everyone’s best friend. The whistle-blowing traffic cops of the hoop world. Refs.

This column will not make me popular in zebra-ville. … which, coincidentally, is where I’ll be spending lots of hours this week, between work and pleasure. But since my common sense ratio has improved only incrementally since I reached the ripe age of “old-enough-to-know-better,” I can’t resist.

I’m with you, fans. Refs tend to drive me nuts. And I’m not even rooting for anyone.

How do I explain this?

OK. I was tempted to call the zebras a hoop Cosa Nostra – without all that messy blood and killing and crime, mind you.

I was tempted to say that once you’re in, they give you their version of a pinkie ring (an IAABO patch and a whistle) and you’re a member of the herd, sworn to secrecy and bound by all zebra rules and regs.

As such, I was going to say that there are two kinds of people: There are zebras, and there are those people who don’t know enough to be zebras.

But I won’t say that. That’s not nice. And I like most of the people who do this thankless job to earn a few extra bucks and stay in shape during the winter.

I will say this: If a guy who watches games for a living (me) and who doesn’t root for anyone (me) and who never feels like his team got the shaft because he doesn’t have a team to root for (me) gets frustrated, can you imagine how the guy up in the cheap seats wearing the face paint feels after driving 120 miles through a blizzard? Or the kid who’s spent three hours a day in the gym since November?

I don’t ask for much, really. All I want is:

A dunk that brings the crowd to its feet, energizes the Auditorium, and sets tongues wagging on press row. One that isn’t greeted with the high-pitched tweet of a whistle and the nearly automatic technical foul that is the reward for that kind of play around here.

If a kid does chin-ups on the rim after a dunk, “T” him up. If his hands make contact with the rim on his follow-through, let us enjoy it, for crying out loud.

I want fewer traveling violations. Just because something looked odd, it’s not necessarily a walk. Just because a kid is quick, it doesn’t mean he had to have taken an extra step.

I want humility and humanity, even while taking charge. Remember Mike Thurston? He’s the best ref I ever saw, in large part because he wasn’t above explaining himself to a curious athlete. He did his job with a serious eye and a grin on his face. There’s a lesson there.

I want refs who realize they aren’t the game.

I want refs who make the same calls they’d make if they were in a small gym in Lubec instead of in the Bangor Auditorium, being evaluated by a table full of more-experienced officials.

I want to agree on 30 percent of the calls made on the nebulous block-charge continuum. … I was going to say 50 percent, but that’s too much to ask. It is, after all, the hardest call in the book.

I don’t want the game to turn on a call that only one person in the gym was bright enough and well-trained enough to see.

Is that too much to ask?

John Holyoke is a NEWS sportswriter.

His e-mail address is jholyoke@bangordailynews.net