Joey Crawford
Episode 157
31 JAN 2022
He is a current candidate for the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame class of 2022. He is the Referee Development Performance Director for NBA Referee Operations, following a career as an NBA official from 1977 to 2016, officiating more than 2,500 regular season games and a record 344 playoff games. Fifty of those playoff games were in the Finals. In the all-time NBA referee rankings, he is first in playoff games, Finals Game 7s, and total games, plus he is tied for first in total seasons officiated. Along the way he also officiated three All-Star Games and even worked the McDonald’s Championship in Germany in 1993. He is also in three Halls of Fame.
Notable guest quotes:
“At one time… it was the largest Catholic school in America. It was called Most Blessed Sacrament in Philly. It was huge. And we lived… right across the street from it.”
“I went to St. Pius X… (and then) in high school… I went to Cardinal O’Hara. We were that Catholic family. It was a tremendous upbringing.”
“When I was pursuing the (NBA), I would pray… I would go to Mass on Sundays… Where we were raised, my father always went to Mass on Sundays and, I’m assuming because I saw that, I did also.”
“I figured it out, that there was importance in other things, and I was going through some trials and tribulations… in my personal life and in my work life and I think that’s when I actually got serious… about my faith.”
“Referees have to learn to serve the game. And, I think sometimes as referees, you get caught up with serving yourself.”
“As you evolve it starts to become you’re taking (the approach), ‘It’s about the game, it’s about the crew, and then it’s about you.’ And if you can take it in that order, you can see that your career is getting better and better because you’re putting yourself on the back burner. And to me it’s actually life too, where you’re trying to be that better person and you’re looking out for someone else instead of yourself.”
“I’ve been to Serbia. I’ve been to Japan. I’ve been to China… We get the opportunity to go in there and try to teach their referees in their country what we do in the NBA… My most favorite thing to do in a year is go on one of those trips.”
“When you run these camps, a lot of time they’re money makers. And that always got in my gut about the money aspect of making money off of refereeing… So, what we decided to do as a group, is, each referee… the money that we collected, we all had our own individual charities.”
Related link:
ESPN video for story Joey told of Villanova player-of-the-year-turned-cloistered-nun
