The Weekside: Where superstar calls come from

The greats don’t seem to need any help but they often get it in the form of superstar calls. These aren’t gifts though. Legends just force the hand of officials.

Soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo has scored eight goals in his last two games. Some people reading a basketball column won’t care nor grasp exactly what that means, but even averaging one goal per game is impressive. So scoring five and three in back-to-back matches for Real Madrid is the equivalent of Kobe Bryant dropping 60 and 50 points on consecutive nights for the Los Angeles Lakers on national television.

As people are wont to do, many raced to discredit the achievement. The goals were mostly “tap ins” (breakaway layups you don’t create yourself) and penalty kicks (technical free throws). One of the penalties, for certain, was undeserved. Ronaldo took a shot and a defender turned his back towards the ball to block it. He succeeded in stopping the shot, but Cristiano — as he is wont to do — threw his hand in the air, exasperated that the defender had impeded his would-be goal with an elbow. This was a clear handball, Cristiano pled, and though it certainly was not a handball, the official took the world’s best goalscorer at his word and awarded a handball. This gave Real Madrid a penalty kick. Cristiano took it, as he always does, and Cristiano made it, as he always does.

Though the blown call didn’t turn the tide of what was eventually a 5-0 win, this was a miscarriage of justice. And Cristiano’s army of detractors just added it to their ongoing case file against the guy who has finished first or second in goals in each of the last five seasons.

Which brings us to the NBA. Even more than in soccer, basketball players get the benefit of favorable calls by the refs. There are no mistakes that can erroneously award a player the equivalent of a penalty kick — which is roughly like Steph Curry getting to attempt a free throw worth somewhere between 30 and 100 points. But teams and players gets undeserved points all game long in the form of foul shots.

There are two things fans fail to realize. First, this will forever be the case. While the league and officials themselves should take all conceivable steps to limited the number of bad calls per game, they will always happen. Even the notorious ref-blasting Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban admits the league has made vast progress in recent years, but even the loftiest goals are like the frog that tries to reach the finish line by leaping half the remaining distance each time. Even with infinite jumps, Kermit isn’t ever going to cross that line.

The other thing fans fail to grasp is much harder to allow yourself to believe: Getting the ref to make bad calls in your favor is a talent.

The greatest players aren’t gifted so-called superstar calls. They earn them, often simply by being who they are and being unfathomably great. So you can demand an unachievable robotic level of objectivity from officials or you can accept how the human brain works and realize that refs forever will be swayed.

Fans are quick to dismiss “superstar calls” in the NBA as unearned, and by the law of the rulebook, they should not be awarded. These criticisms plagued Michael Jordan, at least before he won six titles and all the flaws people believed he had early in his career were overwritten like a 1984 war history with Eastasia. One of the best moments from the Dream Team run in 1992 was an outtake from a photoshoot of Jordan, Magic Johnson, and Larry Bird. The two older superstars were setting their poses behind MJ when Magic warned Larry to be careful because “you can’t get too close to Michael or it’s a foul.”

It’s funny because, well, it’s funny, but also because there was truth to it. It wasn’t just fans of opposing teams. Mike’s Hall of Fame-caliber competitors were bitter, too, and probably jealous, that MJ got to the line so much. Make no mistake: Well over 90% of the free throws Jordan shot in his career were certainly deserved. But he also had a presence that intimidated, browbeat, and legitimately amazed officials.

That’s what is lost when fans try to intimate that “superstar calls” are some conspiracy to market certain players or ensure the sport’s biggest celebrities come out victorious. That isn’t what is happening at all. To insinuate such a reality is cynical to a level that even a cynical bastard like myself finds unnerving. Mostly, though, it is just downright offensive to referees. These are men who aren’t paid millions of dollars and who have, by and large, spent their entire lives in the sport of basketball. They have, generally, risen the ranks and are, mostly, the best in the world at what they do. So fans who consider them to be complying with the marching orders of a nefarious league office are really insinuating some awful things about their principles and moral codes.

So why do superstar calls happen? Because a guy like Michael Jordan or Cristiano Ronaldo is a formidable human being whose mere presence intimidates people. MJ, especially, is a browbeating bully who undoubtedly said some truly unspeakable things to officials, questioning their competency, manhood, and worthiness of sharing an earth with a God like him.

It would be great if that didn’t matter. But it does, and even the most self-assured official will be influenced at times by knowing that calling something the other way may garner the disapproval of a hulking 6’6” maniac — who is also perhaps the most famous human on Earth and has a charisma and level of cool that no ref or any other person has been in the same room with before in his life.

When MJ glares or LeBron invades a ref’s space or Chris Paul throws the whole weight of his incredulity at an official, it is at worst highly intimidating and at best marginally influential.

Here’s a theoretical example related to me. I consider myself a decent writer. Not the best, not the worst, but a blue-collar professional scribe whose work merits publication. Since you’re reading this currently, you either agree or clicked on a link by accident. So if I was hanging out in a room with a bunch of journalism students or unpublished authors, I would likely speak and behave in one way. Put me at a dinner table with Ernest Hemingway, Bob Woodward, and Bob Ryan and my guess is that my demeanor will be different. I couldn’t possibly not be influenced by the mere fact that these giants of my chose profession were in the room.

Refs aren’t different. They generally have plenty of self confidence and personal pride for the fact that they have reached the pinnacle of their profession. Tasked to officiate a run-of-the-mill professional basketball player like, say, Brandon Knight, they can do the job as well as they are able to. But asked to referee Ernest Hemingway? It’s just different.

Then there is the other bias: The bias towards greatness.

If you’re an NBA ref, you see a lot of incredible things. In every game. That is honestly the reason I can’t watch college basketball anymore. The year-end top 10 list of the “Best Dunks” or “Greatest Comebacks” or “Top Moments” of the NCAA season is less impressive than a similar highlight reel of one week in the NBA season. So officials who work multiple games per week see extraordinary things.

Still, there are a few players who routinely do truly mind-blowing things. That list isn’t comprised of who the league wants to market or which players star for a team that will get better ratings. It’s a meritocracy and you know who the people are already: LeBron, Durant, Westbrook, CP3, Steph Curry, Anthony Davis. You’ll sometimes hear retired players compliment their contemporaries by saying, “that’s a guy I would pay to watch play.” The weight of that comment is often lost, but what the phrase essentially means is: I’ve seen thousands and thousands of games and players during my career and most of them were forgettable — but this guy right here, well he did things I couldn’t imagine.

Refs are humans and they watch just as many games — maybe more — so they have that same perspective. So it takes a lot for them to be influenced. And the thing that can move them is being a witness to something great.

This isn’t conscious. No ref — or at least an infinitesimally small number of them — would actually alter the game to make something “great” happen. But that’s the bias, being there to see greatness happen. This can be an individual play that looked so incredible that “OH MY GOD, that had to be a block not a charge” or “OH WOW, certainly that was too amazing to have been preceded by a third step after he picked up his dribble.” Or it can be getting caught up in a 25-point playoff comeback while the building is rocking and everyone in the arena is hoping to see a profound sporting accomplishment achieved that night.

The media parallel again applies. Similarly, the average person really doesn’t understand media bias. There are undoubtedly journalists, and entire media outlets that push a political agenda or outright intend to deceive. Most don’t though.

More than anything, the biggest source of bias is towards importance. When you spend hours — or days or months — attending an event or researching a topic or interviewing a person, you want that thing to matter. So the final output naturally tends to assign a larger value to the subject than it probably deserves. It’s probably irresponsible, it’s certainly misleading, but mostly it’s just human nature.

This business scandal is meaningful in ways others aren’t. This film director is more worthy of your attention than the rest. This athlete’s back story is truly inspirational beyond any you’ve heard before.

Most aren’t trying to deceive. But they are more familiar and closer to the topic than the reader, and when you’re close to something like that, you want it to be bigger, more profound, more meaningful. The bias towards importance is a human failing. And refs fall into the same trap. They inadvertently help fuel 25-point comebacks with terrible calls, subconsciously wanting to see something great happen themselves. They excitedly add a touch foul to a blow-by drive that leads to an air-bending dunk late in the fourth quarter.

I have no idea who the refs were when a young Michael Jordan scored 63 points in the playoffs. I don’t know who officiated his final game with the Bulls when he pushed off on Bryon Russell and hit the most famous game winner of all time.

But the refs who reffed those games certainly know. And I bet all their family and friends know who reffed those games, too.

There is an understandable expectation that officials should be able to listen to a player yell at them for a bad call and not be affected. Then there is the reality of humans having emotions and being affected when they are harshly criticized for failing at their job by a 6’9, 250-pound man who is the most famous athlete in the country and will probably soon be the first black man in U.S. history to become billionaire before the age of 35. There is calling everything by the letter of the law, and then there is watching a force of nature like Shaq paired with a young “Next Jordan???” start to make a comeback against the Trail Blazers or Sacramento Kings.

Yeah, “superstar calls” suck.

But they aren’t going anywhere and they are more a product of greatness than they are something propping it up. LeBron, Jordan, and Crisitano influence refs because they are legends — not because officials want them to be.

Next: Around the Association