Monty McCutchen “Refereeing and Rules Recommendations” from the Fast Break Breakfast Podcast

You can listen to the interview here:

Fast Break Breakfast Podcast

SPECIAL “Refereeing and Rules Recommendations” Former NBA referee Monty McCutchen discusses his new role as VP of Referee Training and Development and many topics relating to rules and the relationships between players and officials. He covers:

• • Daily routine of referees during the season (12:20),
  • his “Rebellious streak” (19:55),
  • how NBA broadcasts can affect public opinion (28:30),
  • the difficulties of officiating a jumping defender (36:25), and a
  • potential upcoming rules change for the 2018-19 season (50:00).

Also, what did he do to unwind immediately after Game 7 of the 2016 NBA Finals?

Monty Interview
All right. Welcome to fast break breakfast NBA podcast. My name is key here alone for a solo interview episode. In this interview is one I was probably the most excited about and anxious about. It’s with NBA referee former NBA referee. Mani McCutcheon, I did a lot of research, I wrote down tons of questions. We didn’t get to hardly any of them. But that’s okay. This is a extremely dirty episode. As we talk about refereeing and mechanics and the public perception of reps and things like that spoiler. I did not mention to him that I had a brief refereeing career at the high school and middle school level. So hopefully Chuck and john will be proud that I didn’t say anything. Like. It’s just like the time I didn’t know if the ball in the basket, roughing a game in front of 100 people or so, as far as context for the interview thing, most of our listeners know that I am normally on the side of the referees. Obviously, as a passionate NBA fan, I get mad at the wrestler and they screw up a lot of things. But I just think they do such a great job with the challenge presented to them with these players who can do all kinds of incredible feats. And again, I’m in the minority I know of my empathy towards reps. I think people who haven’t wrapped basketball on any level, you just don’t have the concept of what it’s like to do this from for floor level without an elevated television camera angle, and just the amount they get right. It’s pretty it’s pretty incredible. just basic stuff, like out of bounds calls. That’s amazing. So like if you’re a person who thinks NBA reffing is broken, or terrible, you might not enjoy this interview. You might be too biased, to enjoy much of it. Or you might be Jeff Van Gundy. Hi, Jeff, thanks for listening. But the fun interview for me, hopefully you will get as much enjoyment from it as I got doing it. I think you’ll hear in his answers. One, how passionate he is and how much he loves doing it, and how hard all of the referees work, to to get to a level of excellence. Knowing perfection is not attainable. So again, we talked about a lot of stuff. We talked about the pump fakes and thousand guys flying through the air and the confusion over those about what is a continuation foul on jump shots. He talks about what he did right after game seven of warriors, Cavs. I pitched him some rule changes and wait for it. He hints that I might be onto something with one of them. And one of them he thought we might see some changes in the upcoming season. So if you are a true NBA junkie, I think you will have a good time listening to this episode, it’s a little longer again, it was very nice of him to sit down for a long time with the phone call. So NBA junkies, this one’s for you. Also, if you’re an NBA junkie, you should probably head over to patreon.com slash fast break breakfast, support us there and get some of that exclusive bonus content we’ve been putting up. There’s a bonus episode from Chuck, but he lost his phone in Denver. I just had the dip and cereal review was put it up. So if you want more content like that more fast break breakfast in the offseason, you get all that@patreon.com slash fast break breakfast it also is the best way to support the show to justify the time that goes into researching an NBA official for many hours. It’s fun, but also making money makes it a little more feasible to keep doing it at this level. So if you want to help us out patreon.com slash fast break breakfast.
My guest today was an NBA official who left in 169 playoff games and is currently the Vice President of referee development and training for the NBA. And he’s a first time guest on fastbreak breakfast. Money McCutcheon money How are you?
I’m doing fine. How are you today?
I’m doing great. That was 169 playoff games That’s according to Wikipedia. I don’t know if you know if that’s a the veracity of that.
Whoever filled that out I’m thankful for I never did much care for sort of counting those numbers up. I I enjoyed all of those games and you know worked really diligently at sort of serving the game in a way that that that felt good to be trusted in trusted by the league to represent the league at the highest and best time of our season. So I am proud of the games. I’ve worked on the leaks to have more certainly,
that’s a very statesman like thing to say, which is good. So I’m going to try to get you to be a little more candid, a little bit of a refresher. And for our listeners, I ran into you on a shuttle bus going from the Las Vegas airport to the rental car center. And I was staring at you thinking, I’m pretty sure that’s money McCutcheon. You were just trying to, you know, not stare at anyone as you’re on your business trip. And, you know, as an NBA nerd fan, I was like, That’s him. But I’ve actually never stared this intently at him. So I googled your photo and be like, yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s him. I’m not gonna bother him. And so I just approached him said, Hi, are you know, are you money McCutcheon? And then you said, Yes. And you seem happy to talk. And we talked about the NBA for the rest of the ride. And it was one of the highlights actually, of my trip. It was like the first moments in Las Vegas, it was a highlight, because you spoke so candidly. And you know, we were talking about, you know, some of the playoff games. That was 2016. When there was a big, I think there was a last two minute report that said the refs missed five calls in the last 13 seconds of a thunder spurs game. And I was like money. I disagree. I thought that game was beautiful. That was my favorite ending to a game of a season. But anyway,
I talk so much where the game is that you thought referee was beautiful. So anyone who thinks Our job is done beautifully. I’m drawn to
Well, I you know, perfection. And I’ve heard you say this, it’s not perfection, its excellence. And again, that that scramble that ended that Thunder spurs game outside of the game winning buzzer beater. I was like that’s one of the finest endings we’ve had. But anyway, on that shuttle bus, I was telling you like, you guys, the NBA referees need to get out there more, and talk to the media, because I was like, I feel like if people could hear you talk, like, they wouldn’t be as angry at referees. It’d be fun. And you’re like, yeah, you know, we don’t, we don’t do a lot of media. But then I ran into you this last summer, or you know, a couple months ago, while you’re eating some nachos. And I interrupted you again. And you remembered our conversation. And I was like, are you? Are you available to come on the podcast? And you’re like, Yes, I am. I am now available to come on podcast. So all that set up to be like, thank you for coming. And I hope that we will get you to metaphorically let your hair down and talk candidly about the game that you do you love and you try to serve?
Well, I you know, I you brought up some good points. I think that the most interesting thing about media and referees is that the that because of social media in particular, I think that our league is rightfully concerned, without proper training, our players and our coaches, of course, get plenty of training on media relationships. So far, referees have not been provided that training up to now. And I think, you know, in terms of how things go viral and everything else, we want to make sure that our referees have been been properly versed in not only how to be honest with questions, as you have said here about being candid, but also about an awareness of how important most of our referees view themselves as as sort of anonymous people who are doing the jobs that they love, and are excited to be a part of on a nightly basis. But they don’t view themselves in a historical context, you know, and yet, we’ve all chosen to live historically. And when you enter into history, you need to be well trained for understanding that your words have impact, that it’s not just Monte McCutcheon speaking, but it’s Monte McCutcheon, NBA referee speaking. And in some ways, that person then becomes an aNBAssador for the people he works for. And more importantly, for the NBA being the worldwide leader in basketball, you then become a spokesperson for for basketball in general in that way. And we want to make sure that our people are are ready for that, so that they can represent the league that they love so much properly. And, of course, since I’ve taken this job, there’s been new opportunities to get received that kind of training. And, you know, these, these podcasts that you and I are doing today are an exciting way for us to share with the world at large, the good work that we believe we’re doing, that it’s a trained work, that it’s a it’s a trained craft, that people put time and energy and hours upon hours at learning how to get better at it contrary to to what any specific fan base may think. referees are professionals they have professed, publicly that this matters to them, which is the history of that word professional. And I think that if we can share the fact that our referees care about this deeply, we have a better opportunity of being received for that excellent standard. As opposed to perfection, being a professional doesn’t mean you don’t make mistakes. Of course, as I’ve said, in other venues, I could fill books up with the amount of mistakes I made. I also worked really hard to be excellent at my craft as the the rest of our staff. And I think that that’s the part we would like to start to highlight is that our staff in particular, really gets after tapeworms they really get after their rules they really get after taking care of their body on any given night when they’re working four games in five nights. And it’s the fourth game in that stretch, that they’ve gotten the proper rest and that they care enough about the game that they’re going to be ready to do their role to play their part in that game. And I think that’s often misconstrued by the public at large as though we just show up and randomly make capricious decisions that impact other people’s lives. And that’s just simply not the case. What is the routine walk
me through the routine? And again, this is like the minutiae of refereeing that I might be more interested in then in the audience. But what is the what’s the daily weekly routine of referees during the season?
Well, I think the important thing to remember is that referees and peer referees don’t get 41 home games. If you’re lucky enough to live in an indie city, then you’re likely to get two or three of the top two or three assignments in that city for the entire year. And so we travel we travel a lot, anywhere from 22 to probably 26 days a month and NBA referees on the road. We have to be in the city the night before the game, if we do not have a game the night before. If we do have a game the night before, then we have to fly out first flight in the morning commercial, of course, and we go fly in, get to the city, we have a pregame meeting every day, if you’ve got a back to back, you were probably up at 2am the night before finishing up game report. And if you were on that first flight at 6am, that probably meant you left the hotel at four 430. And so there’s a routine of difficult travel that NBA referees have to be good at self managing, they must be ready for the game. And so, you know, we’re like kindergarteners in one way we make sure we get our nap every afternoon. You know, we we make sure we prepare and if we have little tweaks in our hamstrings, we’ll make sure we get the proper treatment and the proper stretching and, and the proper rehab that needs to take place to be prepared to continue on. I don’t think people realize how hard NBA referees get work to get to games to make sure that their assignments are completed through difficult travel, rain, canceled flights, driving two hours to this airport to then catch a different flight because one’s going that takes place behind the scenes every year and our staff works incredibly hard to not impact again negatively by, you know, taking the easy way out not to get to a game or impacting the rest of the staff who would then have to cover for that lack of effort and our staff does a great job of getting to games and being prepared to work. As I said earlier, we have a morning meeting every day that discusses, you know, the peculiarities of that particular game. You know, we might discuss that a team’s been out for 10 days, and that they they’re tired and that we should, you know, have some empathy while still upholding our standards. You know for performance on any given night. We might talk about, you know certain matchups if there was a difficult meeting, the last time they play the balance their keys is to make sure that we understand that being well informed, can’t drift into making anticipatory decisions, to have good information makes you a better referee to be well disciplined with that information makes you a better referee. And I don’t think that most people understand how disciplined a craft our refereed staff is, we work as a team, we have areas that are dictated by the ball that inform our mechanics system, in which we know where to stand where and what to look for and when to look for it based on where the ball is. And so at any given 24 second time frame or an NBA possession, we might be on ball off ball 3456 different times as the ball swings around. And as an NBA referee, you must trust that your partner is doing their work according to those mechanics system so that you can do your work. NBA referees that try to see the whole game like they’re watching television are very poor at their work and we luckily don’t have those kinds of referees, we usually set them out before they get here, that discipline of knowing that this is my third to be responsible for it. Anything given time, not only how quickly it can change is what makes us an excellent team. It’s not just individual referees out there randomly deciding what they’re going to do. And when we’re not disciplined on any given night, that’s when we have issues that we end up having to, to work through, you know, post game via video work via talking with me, or other members of our management team. We are well disciplined, and we are all working our portion of the game, we serve the game the best we become the third team on any given contest.
I want to return to that talk about the mechanics and the areas of focus or responsibility for each referee. But talking about that schedule, that daily schedule, one of our gimmicks on our show is just to talk about breakfast every day. So between those meetings between those early like wake up calls are what’s your What was your go to breakfast when you were out on the road? Like were you squeezing those in at the airport? Like was there time to get to bring it to the meeting? What were you eating for breakfast when you were out on the road
our morning meeting is usually around 1130 post breakfast and so if you’re in the city if you’re in the city the night before often you know in the referees are creatures of habit and routine which is what helps them get to the place of good work. And so different referees have different routines most of our referees would meet in the morning informally not the morning meeting per se in the concierge Lounge is of Marriott properties, you know, which is where predominantly referees stay and and you would you would enjoy that time frame would be a little less professional and much more you know, colloquial in the sense that you’re asking about families you’re asking about outside interest and how things are at home your children and your wives. And that’s usually down over concierges loud so you know a healthy dose of of scrambled eggs and continental breakfast I go to was too hard boiled eggs yolks removed and some kind of fruit that would go along with it that was that was my go to breakfast we get NBA referees get weighed in three times a year as part of a collectively bargained agreement you know in terms of staying fit and so most NBA referees will incorporate a workout into their day some do it in the afternoon some do it in the morning but every NBA referee is constantly maintaining a fitness that is both required contractually but also just required to do good work you know we have to be able to stay up with obviously I’m biased of course but the best as athletes in the world in my opinion and to do so at more advanced ages than those athletes are takes a commitment and and a devotion to to that and of course food breakfast included plays a central role as you age you as you will may know I certainly know this but that as I age I can’t work out my my dietary choices and they used to be able to just outwork some but I can’t outwork them anymore and so you know that discipline even then enters into that side of our profession and our our referees are good about maintaining good discipline with their meals breakfast included
that’s funny I did that’s interesting about about the referee weigh in. I was noticing it feels like referees are as fit as they’ve ever been in league history. You look at it now and you’re like these guys are all you can tell they’re their workout warriors are there I didn’t know how much of that requirement I was curious what the requirement was. I also know you guys typically have some probably rules about about grooming like your hair because I think again everyone it’s fairly conservative looks I did notice though marnya your your sideburns got a little out of control a couple times I wonder if you were ever told to to rein back in your side now.
I never was going to anything about my sideburns that do have you know a certain likeness for those people that will wear sideburns and I would drop them down every now and then and then raise them up and different levels of of exploratory fun for myself. You know vanilla makes in our ice cream flavors not that great. So, you know, the sideburns are a small little claiming of that, that fun and enjoyment. You know, in all seriousness about the conservativeness you know, our fans are so passionate and it’s wonderful but you don’t want to give them extra fodder to be taking shots at you. They have plenty of ammunition based on the work and the perception of the work that to be coming out there with you know, four inch long goatees is probably not in our best interest. So most of us do take on more of a conservative look out there in my one little ring barrier streak was to drop my my sideburns down a quarter of an inch longer than they probably should have been. So I’m guilty as charged. And
there was a Christmas Day. I just saw it a couple of days ago and knew I was speaking with you this coming week as a Christmas Day game. It was the CO I think it was Kobe and Shaq meeting against each other for the first time. Lakers heat, and your sideburns were pretty long. And I was like, whoa.
So I’m sure I’m guilty as charged videotape usually doesn’t lie when it comes to NBA referees, whether that’s about a play, or the link of our sideburns.
Well, that’s a that’s a great segue into that videotape. not lying. So so your new your new job? It seems like it’s a couple twofold. One, you know you’re in charge of training the referees, but it also seems like you’ve been given this task of repairing relationships that maybe were getting frayed or trying to improve the quality of communication between the NBA players. And the referees. And I guess all wrapped into that is we have this public perception of referees that I want to talk about extensively. And a lot of that is the last two minute reports. Were people looking at these videos and being able to I don’t know, concretely say, Oh, yeah, that is that’s a missed call and having to deal with that. So all that stuff talking about, first of all, how is the how’s it going with you trying to repair this relationship or meeting with the teams individually to try to improve? I guess, the communication and the respect between referees and players?
I think Michelle Johnson and Sharif Abdul Rahim, Michelle Johnson is my boss, Senior Vice President of referee operations. And Sharif, a longtime NBA player, renaissance man in his own right in terms of many of the things that he pursues in life that are really meaningful. And we all went around and and met with the team, everything from all star break, give or take a few days to the end of the season, give or take a few days. And I don’t know if repair and it’s fine that you use that word, I think it’s a little stronger the word. I think that the NBA tugun flows, what has exploded upon us case, I think that we don’t remember that there. Most of the NBA history was done without social media. And yet the last decade, you know, Charlie villain away, though, was the first person to tweet at halftime of a game and we didn’t even have a policy in place. And he called it a twit at the time. That’s a little bit, you know, it had taken off at that time. And, you know, I would have thought that the way social media feels now that that would have been 1520 years ago, but it wasn’t it was oh nine. And that’s less than a decade that we’ve we’ve been involved with social media. And I think that players that been younger than most of us, a significant portion of their lives has been about growing up under that auspices of social media. And so it’s much more familiar to them. That being said, the scrutiny that they live in under is not the same as a player in the mid 90s. To the early 2000s. Every single person they run across is a reporter that has a phone, you know, and I think that that that’s, to some degree made all of us and the scrutiny of the NBA, the popularity of the NBA has made us all ever so slightly get a little more on edge. And as such, I think it’s important to remind all of us ourselves included on the NBA referee side of things that the game is what is beautiful, the game is what has drawn us all to meet that this sort of cross section or crossroads of time in history in which referees and coaches and players are all coming together. And it’s the love of the game that has brought us there. I think instead of repair I like the word reminding all of us that we’re all doing our part to make this the greatest game on on the planet at the NBA level. Our athletes have the best athletes, but they’re also the best people from top to bottom. Our coaches are the best coaches, but they’re also the best people from top to bottom. And I’d like to think and I know for a fact that our NBA referees are not only the best referees, but they’re also the best people. And when you combine that and can remind people, that we’re all just doing our part with the best efforts that we can, and that it’s okay to disagree about how some of those intersections take place. But what is important to remember is how to disagree. How can we disagree and say I disagree in this way, without being condescending, without being degrading. And that’s both on both sides? How do we claim our work as referees and say it’s good work without being patronizing or without talking down to players or coaches. And I think that to remind ourselves that all of us have a stake in making the game the greatest game on earth. And how do we do that, from a relational standpoint, is a good reminder that we have the best people involved here, let’s don’t go down this path when there are many alternate paths that still allow us to disagree professionally and give different perspectives without having to harmed either the game or the other people involved. And I think that we did a I really enjoyed those meetings. Moving forward, I think it’s an important reminder for me, as as one of the leaders of our management team, that we can do a better job in training, communication, and sharing how to interact with coaches and players in a way that both allows you to give your perspective, but also be open to the fact that yes, lo and behold, I may be wrong on this call. I think that that balance, while you’re still in charge of running the game is an important one, to continually seek out. Knowing that at any given time, we would all like to do a little better players, coaches and referees in how we relate to others. I much suspect that that’s not much different than most families and or much of other work in situations that I’m not involved in. Right. So
with the players having to live in social media, and then now with the game having to live on social media. And you can actually now read just the I guess the avalanche of fan reactions in real time, looking at videos getting upset, is there any way that the league needs to or wants to try to improve, I guess, PR wise on just calls or last two minute reports or the way they present the calls? I know it’s a pet peeve of mine as a fan, is when the announcers it can be the local announcers on a regional broadcast, or it can be Jeff Van Gundy, and Mark Jackson on the national broadcast, who when we’re watching a replay of a call, like they just keep harping on something. And again, I’m like, I feel like this is stoking fan anger, where it seems like they could have a better understanding or explained better even, you know, like when you talk about the mechanics explain, like why this guy called this call, where he is one of the things that I guess, again, as a fan just makes me angry is or just, you know, slightly annoyed is that we see a call and then they just seem to harp on the call and not being like, well, this is why it was called or even worse, the commentators have the rule incorrect. And then they’re complaining you can play Yeah, you know,
I do think I think we can do a better job of getting out corrections on especially on rules. I think that that’s, you know, we never want to get involved in opinion. But if there are rules involved, then we want to make sure that the fans have the proper rule at stake. And in many cases, you know, some bad information does get put out there. Our announcers overall do a really good job of informing our fans of the game. And yeah, home announcers, you know, they’re paid by the teams, and they have a vested interest. They see that team at two games, while seeing their opponents much less obviously. And I think that our fans deserve passionate announcers in the home venue, would we like for them to be more educated and, and because I, once again, I think that we have the best people in play there. You know, no one’s doing these kinds of things in any kind of malicious way. I truly believe that. That being said, it is incumbent upon us to put out good information, include media outlets, when we have the opportunity, most of our, you know, our POV tapes or points of education takes that gets sent to teams and referees end up out face to on nba.com. So we are trying to do a better job of sort of navigating this brave new world in which we get out. I know we have an Instagram page that would that we’re exploring using more extensively, so that young people who use these different avenues of getting their information, we can give good information to them. You know, and I think that mechanics and things like that it is important that we have an understanding referees don’t just watch the game like they’re watching it on on television. And I think you know, one of the jokes I use a lot that I think has a good metaphorical meaning is that if you buy a camera, you’re a photographer, if you buy a piano, you just bought a piano. There seems to be some understanding that you’re not a pianist until you put in hours and hours and hours of training and learning on that. And I think for refereeing, it’s important to remember that having Two eyes doesn’t make you a trained, nuanced professional. The way this the countless years and hours our referees put in prior to getting to us. And I think that from that standpoint, we can do a better job of getting that information out. You know, we we have taken an approach that we want to step with, with good knowledge about how to go about it. We’ve all seen people who have misused social media. And we want to make sure that that we don’t add to the, to the layers of the misuse of social media. And we don’t want to get involved in
matters of opinion, you know, that we don’t think that that has any real bearing or any real fruit on informing our fans, obviously, in a game that moves fast, by strong big, quick, fast athletes, there’s always going to be some some areas in the middle in which our training professional nuance informs us better than those that are not trained in that way. But I think that that’s true of most professions. I can listen to a podcast and think, Wow, would that have been nice to have done that differently? But until I do my own podcast, it’s really hard to know how difficult it is to ask good questions. And, you know, and so the people such as yourself that are doing that really do have a better understanding of what makes for good content. It’s no different for referees, by and large, we do our jobs very, very well. I’ll be it sometimes in perfect with with some imperfections. And we’re always going to work on those imperfections, we’re always going to own those imperfections. The last two minutes report that you’ve mentioned is a good example. You know, if we put out a last two minute report, that is 90, and I’m just using an example. But that is 98%. Correct. The headline is still NPA admits they missed call with 22 seconds. So again, it might have been 72 decisions in that last two minutes that we nailed. And we understand that that’s part of our gig. And that, you know, we’re never going to get away from that no one’s going to report referees did excellent job in last two minutes. Except for two mistakes. No, that’s not a headline, right? That’s not what grabs anyone. And so that’s okay. I would like us on our end to get out and get that message out that overwhelmingly, in the last few minutes of games, our staff rises to the occasion. The statistics, you know, bear that out. And yes, there’s always going to be a call that unfortunately, gives contrary information to that, that we would have liked to have done better. But I would, I would sort of offer up that I don’t think there’s any difference for coaches or players in that regard, that they too can go back and look at the last impactful moments of games, and wish or come to a conclusion that there might have been better choices involved. Unfortunately, referees live with that, and they don’t do so lightly. Missed Calls at the end of games, weigh on our officiating staff heavily. They like to be good at their work. They want to serve our players and our coaches, to the best of their abilities and to the past that the game calls for. Unfortunately, that’s not always the case. And that leads through many sleepless nights for referees or some sleepless nights for referees, I should say.
Right? So moving to some of the rule changes that the League has undergone recently that I think were really good rule changes again, just as a fan. A lot of times when fans are upset at the referees, it turns out they’re upset at the rules, like the rules correct.
They’re like, Oh, well, that’s
a stupid rule, you know, but there’s this, they still seem to direct that anger. So the NBA changed the rule, like the rip through rule that James Harden and Kevin Durant and others got really good at. And again, as a fan that was that I felt like that was that was a great job by the league to address something where players had developed a trick that by the letter of the law, that was that was a three shot foul. And then last season, they changed the rule that I guess on jump shooters, and again, forgive me for using the if I use the terminology incorrectly. But the if you don’t, on a jump shot, a lot of this happened when a ball handler would would get a screen a big man would show and then the ball handler would lean in to that defender, get a bump and then shoot a jumper. And a lot of guys have gotten really good at that like Chris Paul and other guys are getting three shot fouls off of this and in the league decided that isn’t worth that. So you change the rule to um, if they haven’t gathered with what, or they haven’t started the upward motion of the jump shot. It wasn’t continuation and I think that rule last year I think was a bit confusing. I know especially going to local announcing teams. I think they were very good. confused, is the rule that if it’s a jump shot, there’s no continuation. But if they’re moving towards the basket Oh, sorry, say that again.
Yeah, I mean, it’s nuance. I mean, obviously, if it’s a jump shot, we can have continuation, what we were finding, I, I may be in the minority here, but I love it when players work at their craft so much that they force us to work at our craft. And we used to use the adage that if you didn’t dribble again, that it was continuation. But we were finding far too many examples of someone getting bumped on, let’s say, a down dribble. So they’ve already put their last dribble down, but they get bumped while the ball is on the way up. And in real time, without being a trained eye, that looks like continuation. But when we start looking into a rulebook and seeing that, how can you have continuation when the ball is on the ground on the dribble, it most certainly has not been gathered yet, if we’re going to take a shot inside the lower defensive box. And so from that standpoint, we had to start getting better at seeing how our rule book, The words of our rule book, actually, were impacting the play at hand out on before. And players had gotten so good at using various methods to get to the free throw line, that we realized, in many instances, what was happening on the floor, did not mirror up with the language of our room. And if we have upward shooting motion, and I wrote a book, then we had to do a better job of understanding what that meant in real time. You know, and so if we have gather in our rulebook for a drive, we had to do a better job of defining what a drive was up against what a jump shot is, because, you know, is somebody who goes off one foot driving, if they’re shooting a 60 footer, at the end of a quarter, is that a drive because they went off one foot, as opposed to the end, a jump shot from that distance. And so all of those things led to the rule changes that you’re discussing. And when we start talking about these levels of tolerance, Keith, what we have to do is that we have to understand that referees, there’s a visual syntax to our work that, so years ago, we had the same foot, the same foot hot, hot travel, that Paul Pierce made very popular. So if he wanted to get through to defenders, he would go off his right foot in step one, and land on his right foot for step two, and then go through that way. And we realized that hopping, you know, the competition committee made a decision that hopping shouldn’t be a part of basketball. Well, that took our referees a little while to visually create that language of how to see that play. Because prior to that, it was just you just two steps. Now we had to see it in a different way. And it has a visual rhythm to it. And so when we first did the rip through, we realized that you can’t be shooting if first contact, you’re ripping the ball from side to side. And so from that standpoint, it took our referees some time to get to where they weren’t good at see. And last year with the first opportunity to be a part of this rule, I do think that there were some plays that we could have adjudicated more correctly. That being said, we were still really good at it. And the few times that that our announcers know the differences between the rules, ie some of these bumps and different things. So for example, here’s what they got a lot of press, if you jump sideways, can that be a decent to foul? Is the authentic player jump sideways? The answer is both yes and no. And the trained professional is trained to understand the difference between why it is a foul and why it is not a foul. So in this case, we heard a lot about if if I pump fake someone up in the air and jump sideways, why is it sometimes a foul and not others and here’s the reason. If I just say if I get you pumped up in the pump faked in the air, and you jump towards me, and you’re going to hit me, regardless of whether I jumped to the side or not, you’re going to catch part of my shoulder and all I do is jump sideways slightly to ensure that then it’s still a decent to found your up legal guardian position. But if I jump on uptake, and I’m clearly going to miss you to the side, and I have to jump so far to the side to create that contact, then it’s a no call or an offensive foul depending on the severity of the contact. But when announced announce that they say things through along these lines. Oh, I just saw that last week. And that was a no call, right?