Throughout my NBA career, referees were always looking to nail me. They gave everybody a license to beat on me, but every time I so much as scratched my ass, a foul was called on me. Jim Capers once called a foul on me while I was sitting on the bench. Tweet! "Foul, number fifty-three. Five-three." Everybody was confused and looking around for number fifty-three, so I stood up and said, "I'm over here and the only thing I'm fouling is the water bottle." Then Capers started stuttering and looking around for another number. "I-I mean thirty-one. Yeah, that's it. Three-one."
I saw Sam Lacey, who'd been in the league for ages, get in a referee's face and say, "That's a f---ing shame how you f---ed up that call, you son of a bitch!" And the ref just turned and walked away. I also saw another veteran, Norm Van Lier, say to a ref, "That's bull---- you're calling, man. That's f---ing bull---- and you can s--- my d---!" Again, the ref walked away. Then when I blocked somebody's shot and said to myself, "Get that s--- outta here," I got teed up.
The best thing a referee ever did? We were playing in New Jersey and the game was on the line. Earl Strom and Dick Bavetta were the senior refs, and Strom made a call that went against the Nets and won the game for us. But Bavetta came running and jumping from halfcourt, saying, "No, no, no! I got a push off against McGinnis!" Strom said to Bavetta, "Are you overruling my call?"
"I got pushing off right here," Bavetta insisted, and the Nets wound up winning the game.
We were just walking into our locker room when the door to the referees' locker room came flying open and I saw Bavetta come staggering out. His shirt was torn, he had a big knot over his eye and he was running any way he could find to run. Then Strom stepped out into the runway and shouted after him, "You'll take another one of my f---ing calls again, right, mother------?" I also came to believe that many of the white refs were racists. White guys always got away with more s--- than black guys did. For example, after I was in the league for a couple of years, I was playing in Detroit against Bill Laimbeer, the master of the cheap shot. So I jumped to shoot the ball, and he ran up to me and punched me in the nuts. Almost knocked me out. I'm doubled over in pain and I said to the nearest referee, "Didn't you see that?" The ref said, "No, I didn't see it." Okay. A couple of plays later, I'm under the basket with Laimbeer and I punched him in the kidney. BOOM! He fell down like a little bitch and started screaming, so the referee called a foul. Then the ref came up to me and said, "If you hit a white boy like that, I got to call the foul."
No matter who had position, it seemed that if a black player tried to draw a charging foul against a white player, it was always a blocking foul. Switch them around and the black player was always called for charging into a white player. It also seemed hard for a white guy to foul out because not too many fans were willing to pay to see nothing but blacks out there. The referees must have also realized that the black guys were better athletes than the whites so the white players had to have an edge somewhere.
The refs haunted me my whole career. Stan Albeck, who coached me later with the New Jersey Nets, couldn't believe some of the referees' calls that were going against me. Unlike my previous coaches, he decided to do something. After spending hours at the tape machine, Stan put together the very first Darryl Dawkins video. Eight beautiful minutes of my side of the story. A total of 76 fouls called on me that never warranted a whistle. There were hacks that never happened, invisible bumps, imaginary extra steps, clean blocks that turned into free throws for other teams. Then Stan sent the tape to officials in the NBA league office but nothing changed.
According to the league, even though I may have had perfect position to draw a charge I was inevitably called for a block only because I was so big. Whenever I fell down after drawing what really was a charge, the logic went like this: "If a guy as big as Dawkins falls after being hit by a smaller player, then Dawkins must be faking." And what about all the times I was fouled in the act of shooting? "Dawkins is too strong for anything but a karate chop to interfere with his shot." That's the same reasoning that keeps Shaquille O'Neal from shooting 30 free throws every game.
To make matters worse, the referees never took me seriously. Common referee wisdom held that a player wasn't really playing hard unless he had a hangdog look on his face. The look you get when the finance company repossesses your car, or when the landlord raises your rent, or when your wife tells you she's ten weeks pregnant and you've been on a West Coast trip for three months.
On the court and off, I've always got a smile on my face. And why not? It's great to be alive. Even when I'm mad I don't scowl too long before my grin takes over. Unfortunately for me, the refs decided early in my career that I was only out there to clown around. Yet there were other guys, like Magic Johnson and Dominique Wilkins, whose standard game-face included a s---eating grin, and the refs gave them the benefit of every close call.
I tried everything to establish a rapport with the refs. I even swallowed my pride and tried complimenting them. When I said, "Nice call," they shot right back with, "I know." When the nice-guy approach didn't work, I yelled at them to try and make them think more about the next call. Besides a sore throat, all that got me was more quick fouls and early exits. In all, I played in the league for 14 seasons and I could never completely understand the referees' continuing and personal bias against me. In hindsight, though, I think the answer to the mystery was very simple: Somehow the referees figured out that I really thought they were all d---heads.
So f--- referees and everybody who looks like them.
http://espn.go.com/page2/s/dawkins/030520.html