Milwaukee Bucks center Myles Turner says that NBA referees are similar to the police in the way that they stick together—which can make dealing with them a pain.
During an episode of Game Recognize Game w/ Stewie & Myles, Turner gave his opinion about referees in an explosive rant.
“The refs are like the police,” he began. “If you fuck with one of them, you fuck with all of them.
“And it’s like they band together,” he continued. “It’s like, ‘Nah, he’s not getting no calls.’ And I’ve seen it actually happen, bro. It’s crazy.”
Turner then gave an example of how that would actually look.
“One thing you’ll see is, like, the rookie refs, or the younger refs, the veteran refs really look out for them,” Turner explained. “So if you go after a rookie ref, or cuss them out—or the female refs, as well, on our side—if you go after the female refs, the veteran refs will come in and step in, and basically fuck you out of the game.”
Check out Turner’s rant around the eight-minute, 43-second mark in the video below.
Turner’s perspective on referees aligns with complaints that other players and NBA officials have had over the years.
In 2019, former NBA referee Tim Donaghy, who was indicted for betting on and fixing games he officiated, spoke about how referees can fix games if they don’t like individuals on certain teams in an interview with Bright Side of the Sun.
Donaghy’s discussion focused on supervising official Tommy Nunez during the 2007 playoff series between the Phoenix Suns and San Antonio Spurs. According to Donaghy, Nunez didn’t like the former Suns’ owner, Robert Sarver, because of “the way he berated referees.”
“He dictated the entire series what to call and what to look for in that series, and everything was going in favor of San Antonio,” Donaghy explained. “To me, Phoenix was definitely put in a disadvantage in that series.”
Going further, Donaghy explained why referees didn’t like Sarver.
“[Sarver] came in and saw what Mark Cuban was doing,” Donaghy said. “And I think he was going to take it to a whole new level and would just sit right there on the court and scream and yell at the referees all night. We kind of laughed at him. We thought he was a drunk nut.
“Some referees take it extremely personal,” Donaghy said. “And when something can go either way they’re gonna make it go against him. And that’s what a lot of people were doing. And unfortunately for [Sarver] he got on the bad side as soon as he came in, of the whole entire officiating staff.”
