Steve Javie
Episode 124
14 JUNE 2021
He spent 25 years as a referee in the NBA, officiating over 1,400 regular season games, 240 playoff games, 23 NBA Finals games, and two All-Star Games. He has also been a rules analyst for ESPN/ABC. Earlier in his career he was a referee in the CBA, which followed time that he had spent as a minor league baseball umpire, himself having played in the Baltimore Orioles’ organization at the minor league level after pitching for Temple University. In high school he had achieved All-Catholic honors in both baseball and basketball in his Junior and Senior years. Four years ago he was inducted to the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame, and last month he was the recipient of Sports Faith International’s Father Smyth Award. In 2019 he was ordained a Deacon in the Catholic Church and just celebrated the two-year anniversary.
Notable guest quotes:
“My grandparents came over from Poland, and, very Catholic. As a matter of fact, my dad’s brother was a Catholic priest for almost 70 years… in the Philadelphia archdiocese. Great guy — one of my favorite uncles.”
“We went to confession every two weeks, Mass every Sunday, we sat in the first row every Sunday.”
“People, they work hard at their job. They put 40 hours of work in, 60 hours of work in. And they reap the rewards. But they think that 45 minutes to an hour a week is enough to satisfy them in their faith journey and it really isn’t… It just doesn’t work that way in anything. So, you get, obviously, out of something what you put into it.”
“No matter where we are in our journey, no matter how bad we think we might be right now, God’s forgiving mercy … is there waiting for us if we just open our hearts to His grace.”
“I still vividly remember sitting in Los Angeles having lunch one day and it was just coming up on my second knee surgery and I said, ‘Ya’ know, there’s gotta be more to life than just blowing a whistle on basketball players’… I was blessed to provide for my family… but… At the end of my life, to say that I refereed professional basketball, so what?”
“My wife and I had formed a foundation, The Javie Foundation for charity… we helped raise money for local charities… and I said… ‘I think the Lord wants me doing more than just raising money’.”
“I still remember looking up… in the stands and I remember saying to myself, ‘I wonder what the Lord has planned for me now’.”
“I was discerning and praying about the Lord and asking Him to speak to me in a way that He can tell me what He wants from me ’cause I wanted to give back to the Lord something because He had blessed me so much in my life.”
“The Lord blessed me with a family and friends and my profession and the talents He gave me, and I just said, ‘I have to serve Him somehow’.”
“It’s been the most incredible journey of my life, my spiritual journey.”
“I just want to explain to men and to people that God can do anything, He really can. If He can mold me and make me into what He wants me to be, which is to profess my faith and to preach the truth on Sundays and so on and proclaim the gospel, He can do it for anybody.”
“I know a lot of people don’t hear about referees, all they do is yell at them… But there’s quite a few referees that are into their faith… So, there’s a lot of guys that I’ve come across in my profession that are just great, great men; family men, great men in their community… and a lot of times we sit and we talk about the faith and talk about the Bible.”
