SAN JUAN (William Rosario's Somewhere in the Americas) - I've been trying to not pay attention to basketball this week. So this is going to be short. I’ve caught up on movies and some TV here and there and it has been fun. Players are not the only ones that have an off-season. But, to quote Michael Corleone in The Godfather Part 3: "Just when I though I was out, they pull me back in!"

One of those TV shows I watched was the always compelling and groundbreaking Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel in which there was an update of a piece the show did in the rising violence against referees in the United States. There have been two refs killed in soccer games this year. The aggression, the journalist argued, is at an all-time high in USA.

Hmm. That struck a nerve with me. I am now doing that mental recollection of all that went down in the recently-finished 2014 South American League and amidst all the great basketball that was played this season, I have to confess I keep coming back to what seemed to me like an unprecedented level of aggressiveness against referees in the competition. That beautiful South American passion turned to rage pretty quickly. It was out of control. 

It became very clear to me during the semifinals in the Obras Sanitarias gym in Buenos Aires. 

I've always joked about the great acoustics in that complex and how you can listen to every profanity or insult being thrown at anyone with real clarity. It was actually built with the purpose of hosting rock concerts. Iggy Pop, the Beastie Boys, James Brown, The Ramones, James Taylor, the Sex Pistols, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Soda Stereo have all played there. 

So there we were in the stadium, in the first game of the semifinals, about one third full, when it began. Immediately both Argentino de Junin and Malvin fans started screaming after every whistle. "Your mother" this, "You Cuban" that. There wasn't even a Cuban ref. It was a complete disgrace.

There wasn't anything that warranted that type of behavior so quickly. They just wanted to insult another human being without any sense of context and knowing there's no consequence to their actions. It was anarchy. And the refs kept their cool. Totally focused on the game.

Working for FIBA has given me a sense of empathy towards these guys. I've now seen how much of an accepted social conduct it has become to scream and insult them. "They don't know anything," someone said to me in Buenos Aires when I asked about the aggressiveness towards the refs. I now know that's not true.

In the Americas, we have a guy by the name of Geraldo Fontana who is in charge of the Referees Department. He is obsessed with the education of international referees and spends eight months out of the year going to every country in the continent giving clinics and supervising their growth. He is also super active in social media, uploading videos of specific situations and discussing it openly with anybody that pays attention. Slowly but surely he has developed a community of informed referees in the continent. One of his videos even has more than 86,000 views on YouTube! 

He's there in every championship, analyzing video of every veteran professional ref. But in the eyes of those fans, he cannot win. He has lost before the game has even started.

People are going to think what they are going to think. I always talk about the FIBA Americas twitter feed and the referee comments we normally receive. To me it's the perfect example of the dynamics I'm talking about.

The refs are blamed if Puerto Rico wins, because "FIBA Americas offices are in Puerto Rico, so they are obviously biased". If Argentina wins, it's because "the Secretary General and the former President are Argentinean, so they are obviously biased"; if Brazil wins, it's because "they have a lot money and Fontana is Brazilian, so they are obviously biased". And on and on they go. They are biased towards Venezuela and Mexico also because of the money. Towards Dominicana because they are told to favor Caribbean teams and towards Uruguay because they are told to favor South American teams. Etcetera, etcetera.

So they justify their anger however they can. But it's starting to get out of hand.

"Futbol (soccer) fans are worse," a journalist told me in Buenos Aires. Maybe, but they are closer in basketball arenas.

As the social tempers flare up in the Americas because of the different crises in the different countries, you can see the anger making its way into sports. And if indeed it has become socially acceptable to verbally abuse referees, it is only a matter of time before that "justified anger" translates into more tragedy. Let's hope not.

I know it has always been difficult to be a ref. The insults, the screaming, has always been there. I just believe that now, with all the information out there and with guys like Fontana constantly educating people on the matter, it is completely unacceptable.

Let's agree to disagree. Let's be passionate about our teams. But ignorance is never pretty... 

…and I though this one was going to be short. 

William Rosario

FIBA

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