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Joey Crawford, NBA official, argues with Blazers guard Damian Lillard during Game 3.

(Bruce Ely/Oregonian)

PART THREE: At 5:30 a.m. Saturday morning, "Joey Crawford" was trending in Portland on Twitter. The Trail Blazers and Rockets playoff series Game 3 went overtime on Friday evening, ending with a gutsy game-winning shot by an unlikely Houston hero, Troy Daniels, but it was a 62-year-old NBA official who became the topic of conversation.

Crawford had been booed by the crowd at the Moda Center the night before. He'd been criticized, subtly and directly, by the various broadcasters covering the game. Now, it was a social media platform's turn, and as it turns out, it's possible that these things are the only real accountability that Crawford will face.

The NBA disagrees with that thought. But what The Oregonian has learned in the last week about the officiating regulations, and the league's attempt to steer public discourse about officiating, raises an important question for commissioner Adam Silver's league.

Is it interested in the officiating being the best it can be?

Former coach Jeff Van Gundy has a message for the league office when it comes to the job of NBA referee.

"I understand their job is hard. I understand officiating is hard, but guess what? So is guarding LaMarcus Aldridge. So is coaching. Of course it's hard, that's why those guys are making a lot of money. I'm not big on the idea that anytime you disagree on something, don't say anything about it," said Van Gundy, working now with ESPN as an NBA television analyst.

"I think they've been programmed to say that no one is supposed to talk about it. That you're supposed to say the officiating doesn't matter when we all know it absolutely does."

For this comment, Van Gundy's bosses at ESPN may get a call.

The NBA league office works behind the scenes to manipulate the public discussion on officiating, especially by on-air analysts, according to Van Gundy and others in the broadcast industry.

"They've tried to hurt me with my bosses," Van Gundy said. "They've called my bosses and said, 'Nobody wants to hear that guy whine about officiating.' They're pretty sensitive about that sort of stuff. I'm not quite sure why. I think by critiquing them you're talking of their importance to the game.

"I'm not sure why they'd be upset with that."

Rod Thorn, the NBA's director of operations, said this week that the league monitors and logs what broadcasters say about officiating and rules. He outlined the league's program to evaluate and assign officials. And he believes the NBA has the best basketball officials in the world.

Thorn, who returned to the league eight months ago after a 13-year hiatus, said he hasn't made a practice of calling networks, complaining about criticism of his officials.

"I don't place those kinds of calls. I never have since I've been here. When I was here before, I didn't do it either."

NBA director of communications Tim Frank acknowledged this week that he does reach out to broadcasters as a courtesy. When the Trail Blazers lost a controversial overtime game in 2012 to Oklahoma City, Frank sent one such note to team play-by-play broadcaster Mike Barrett.

In that game, with Portland leading the Thunder 103-101 with six seconds left, Aldridge blocked Kevin Durant's breakaway layup from behind. The officials whistled Aldridge for goal-tending, and the game went to overtime where Portland eventually lost. Replays and a subsequent review by the NBA determined that the goal-tending call was incorrect. In an email after the game, Frank praised Barrett, who refused to join his broadcast co-host Mike Rice in torching the game officials.

"Yeah," joked Rice on Friday. "Where's my letter?"

Rice, a former coach, is a frequent and outspoken critic of NBA officials.

"As a coach, you're always looking for officials who are out of position. You know what a good call is, and a bad call, and that's often based on positioning. I feel like it's my job to say what I see, and when they're not good, you have to say it."

Earlier this NBA season, with the Blazers in Toronto to play the Raptors on Nov. 17, 2013, Rice said he was approached by two members of the NBA's executive-office team. At the Air Canada Centre before the Blazers' victory over the Raptors they sat and discussed his on-air criticisms of officiating.

"It was just a little sit-down," Rice said. "They wanted to go over some things, and tell me what a difficult job the officials have. You know, 'Try to see this through the eyes of an official' and 'They have a really hard job' all that."

The message to Rice was clear: Get off the officials.

Frank, with the league office, said the NBA doesn't make a practice of sending letters to broadcasters, and he doesn't have discussions with anyone about curbing criticism on air. But the broadcasters themselves say they know they're being monitored. In fact, several contacted for this piece declined to comment on the record for fear of retaliation from the NBA.

"I send notes more as a courtesy," Frank said. "When a broadcaster does a great job explaining a rule and giving the viewer some real insight into the rules of the game, I'll send a note from time to time."

Frank also remembered an occasion when he educated an NBA television broadcaster with a clarification of rules. "The broadcaster didn't know the rule on an in-bounds play. I called him after the game and told him the rule. He was receptive to it. He appreciated the direction."

The practice of either positively praising a broadcaster for favorable coverage or sitting one down for a talk for unfavorable coverage is troubling. If accountability for officials is a goal of the league, why the interest in curbing discussions about the quality of officiating? Why the sensitivity on the issue in general?

"Everything has been so secretive," former NBA official Mike Mathis said. "When I talk secretive, I'm talking about how they don't even tell you how the voting goes for each referee and how they assign officials for the playoffs... they always retain 60 percent of a referee's ratings.

"Why is that? Because then they can pick and choose."

The NBA doesn't make its reports on each game available to the media. The officials being reviewed only see 40 percent of the data. Mathis, who officiated 12 NBA Finals before retiring in 2001, said the NBA does this because it prefers to assign and reward the officials regardless of how consistent and skilled they've been during the regular season.

Mathis said fair media criticism became an important part of his own evaluation process.

"I was never afraid of it," he said. "If I was wrong, I was wrong, but guess what? That (accountability) was going to spur me on to try to be right more often. When you're trying to get more plays right and there's accountability, guess what? You're not going to look across the floor and guess."

Players, coaches, executives and owners are fined if they publicly question officiating. The NBA's officials are not permitted to speak to the media unless the league grants permission in advance. The only time officials speak after games is to explain a rule to media.

Therefore, perhaps the greatest bit of immediate accountability for the league's officials, ends up that of public discourse, largely influenced by the journalists and broadcasters who cover the games. In the case of the NBA, the voices and opinions of its broadcast partners become a powerful part of the dialogue on officiating.

How much sharper could the officiating be if the voices weren't curbed? Officiating is a thankless job, but how do we really know how good the officiating is if the league doesn't want to demonstrate it to the public? And why is the league so interested in what's being said about its officials in the first place?

"Joey Crawford," not "Troy Daniels," was trending on Twitter. Nobody should be happy with that. Did Crawford cost Portland the game? No. But he did influence how it was played.



"There are three teams on the floor and each one of them is important to the game," Van Gundy said. "They pay those guys a lot of money -- I don't think anybody is saying they don't deserve the money. But yeah, when I'm critical of them, my bosses hear about it.

"I've heard things often from the league."

--- @JohnCanzanoBFT

