NBA must stick up for refs, stop attacks, official says

NEW YORK -- Whether Jeff Van Gundy is retained as Houston's coach is up to the Rockets, but the league needs to do a better job of defending its game officials from criticism by coaches, the spokesman for the National Basketball Referees Association said Tuesday.

Lamell McMorris, the lead negotiator for the NBRA, said the NBA's response to Van Gundy's comments about league officials targeting Rockets center Yao Ming was unacceptable. However, McMorris did not call for Van Gundy's job, as he did in a statement Monday night.

"Van Gundy is really not the issue here, per se," McMorris said Tuesday in a phone interview with the Associated Press. "Van Gundy and whether or not he'll be retained is up to the Houston Rockets.

"The real issue is the culture that I feel has been created where referees are the easy scapegoat. Where it is easy to allege, easy to accuse and easy to attack the referees. Even easy and acceptable to question the integrity of the referees publicly."

The league fined Van Gundy $100,000 -- the largest assessed against a coach -- after the coach said that an official who was not working the playoffs told him that Yao was being targeted following complaints by Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, Houston's first-round opponent.

On Monday, Van Gundy clarified his comments, saying when he referred to an NBA official, he was not talking about a game official and was intentionally vague when people inferred he meant a referee.

The NBA said it was satisfied with Van Gundy's explanation and he would not be disciplined further. McMorris then put out a statement saying, "The matter will truly be closed only when Van Gundy is fired."

On Tuesday, McMorris shifted his focus from Van Gundy to the league.

"One thing we should observe or note is that at no time during the last week did the NBA or Van Gundy come to the defense of the refs," McMorris said.

Commissioner David Stern had said the league would investigate Van Gundy's remarks and he threatened more punishment -- perhaps even banishment -- if Van Gundy did not cooperate.

Speaking Tuesday in Miami, where he watched the Heat-Wizards playoff game, Stern said he considers the issue to be over.

"I was most concerned about the coverage for an entire week of the fact that Jeff had gotten a phone call from a referee," Stern said. "That's what the media said. That's what he didn't take any pains to correct . . . I wanted to give him the opportunity to retract that, because we knew it to be false."

Stern also had harsh words for McMorris, saying he was "a little bit over his head in dealing with these difficult issues."

"If the head of the referees' association was smart, he'd stop issuing press releases," Stern said.

Rockets GM Carroll Dawson declined to comment on McMorris' remarks.

"That's behind us. This has gone on too long. We're moving on," Dawson told the AP Tuesday.

McMorris said that even though the NBA punished Van Gundy, it did not do enough to defend its refs.

"By his implication that a member of the staff was the source, people implied that it was a fact," McMorris said. "No one publicly challenged that implication. That's not a defense of the referees. That falls quite short."

McMorris also said that Stern's calls for an investigation amounted to a "witch hunt."

"Had they identified whomever this referee was, supposedly, the punishment would have been much stiffer (than Van Gundy's)," McMorris said. "There would have been serious repercussions."

McMorris said the NBRA had no plans to meet with the NBA, Van Gundy or the Rockets to discuss their concerns.

Van Gundy's brother, Miami coach Stan Van Gundy, said the situation is weighing heavily on the family.

"I'm just disturbed by the whole thing," Stan Van Gundy said before his team played Washington on Tuesday. "I really feel bad for him, obviously. It's just been a real tough time. You lose in a series and that's all going on . . . I'm having a difficult time with it. And I feel very, very, very badly for him."

Emotionally, Stan Van Gundy said his brother is getting along relatively well.

"He always holds up, but it's not an easy time right now," the Heat coach said.

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