Let it be known I may burn at the stake and by that I mean be a target but I don’t care anymore; not after recent events. I think it is time the player spoke out as well.
I love the game of basketball; ask my sore knees and severally twisted ankles. They’ll vouch for me. I love competing because I get to see just how good I am and it turns out I’m not half bad. So everything should be a piece of cake on the court huh? Wrong! This is the part I stick my face into a cold bucket of water and scream till my lungs get filled.
My growing problem when it comes to playing basketball is the referees in the division one series of men’s basketball in the Accra Basketball League. Now, I am no wuss and I sure as hell don’t like to make excuses when playing. You can foul me hard but as long as I had a good look at the rim and did not score after, I’d wave it off because you’ve got to be tough. As you read this, I’ve had one of the roughest games ever; I got three elbows to the mouth, two head butts to my stomach, two slaps and a scratch on my face. I look beautiful if you are wondering. What I am not happy about is I did not even receive a single call when these acts were committed in the plain sight of the referees.
One of them actually took the whistle out of his mouth and told my opponent to “stop the nonsense” or he would call a foul. My point is, it had already happened and no call was made because the referee didn’t feel like it. Whining you say? Maybe, but there comes a time in a man’s life when he’s got to do what he’s got to do and at this time it’s to whine like I’m Goldilocks running from the three bears.
The referees watched as I was hacked and bashed so hard even Freddy Krueger would have felt sorry for me. They brushed it off like you would a fly. However, touching the opponent or even grazing them led to calls that were raining harder than a hailstorm. The fans at Lebanon House saw it all, some were livid, some were obviously enthused about it and I just wanted to run over some officials with a tractor.
It’s their sense of power and entitlement that really grinds my gears. Referees shouldn’t be biased but they made their allegiance evident; it did not help that my coach called them out and challenged some of their procedures. It just added to it all. How many times has somebody been given a bit of power and abused it? Too many times, too many times. It happens across the country so naturally it has to manifest in a basketball match.
They started calling fouls where there weren’t any. One time, a teammate found the ball in his possession and on jumping seemed to have hit a wall in the air. The crowd shouted “and 1” after the foul, the referee said travel… Sacré bleu! Now my tirade is almost over and let me make it clear it is 80% of the referees that seem to be this way. I play pickup with the other 20%, they’re cool.
In all honesty, we have a problem with our game officials in the league. Just ask anyone who plays in it and gets on their bad side. Just like our smartphones need updates to function properly, these guys need to be updated too because their glitches are harming the game. I heard the league wanted to do things differently and change for the better this year, I wonder if these referees need a hint.
Written by David Maja Salako ()
Mini Q & A with Referee Gasu
Gh basketball could use a couple more people like this man...trust me!
RGH followed up on the wall post he dropped our facebook page. It read like "Why is everybody shying away from basketball officiating? The Referees' Association badly needs a fresh injection of personnel and commitment!" and drew a couple of interesting suggestions.
This sounded like an urgent call for help from the man who's also the secretary of the referees' association.
So I called up Gasu to further explain what exactly he meant in the post(yea, I know it was as simple as it could be, but who knows, he might have meant more).
He started by describing how he himself got into officiating. "Certain things should have been institutionalized long ago, but as you know, our system is not the best and many of those things do not happen. So for some us when we wanted to be referees, we were taken through training by Mr. Iddrisu Gamel before we were made to start officiating. Along the way through our own initiative and interest in acquisition of more knowledge about the game we regularly read material from the internet and other sources."
When asked if he made the statement because of any impending referee course, he responded by saying that it was a personal initiative; which he knows his chairman will applaud. He went on to say that any interested person should apply to the referees association and he will personally aid the person through all processes that are required to make one a part of them. "We need new guys to inject some sought of competition among the refs, so that it becomes like it's done in soccer and other sports, if you do not perform well as a referee, you are not given any games to officiate. There's a lot of complacency among the refs because they realize there are no other options but them".
If interested why don't you pick a phone and call referee Gasu on 024 3835148 or find him on facebook as http://www.facebook.com/#!/bquarmyne or follow the refs on http://www.facebook.com/#!/pages/Basketball-Referees-Ghana/215237911848598
Not forgetting our Coaches
...are our coaches up to the task?
A team without a coach is like sheep without a shepherd, even though they might survive, that's all they will ever be; survivors! It is always difficult for the team to achieve any feats, not even mentioning extraordinary ones without a father figure (ask the Sacksville Panthers).
You can agree with me that enough has been said of our referees. Now to the big question, are our coaches who complain of bad officiating good in their own field? There are a couple of questions that could be asked to help get to the answer of the first one. What are the roles of our coaches? how can one be said to be a good coach? what can the national / regional associations do to make our coaches the good coaches they need to be to help with the development of the game.
Opinions vary a lot on this subject, so do the responsibilities of coaches, depending on what level they are coaching at. For example coach Lawal Brimah can't / shouldn't / doesn't coach the Galaxy Academy kids the same way he coaches his CEPS team or his Accra Polytechnic students.
Now to what makes one a great coach. In many coaching can be compared to parenting. Obviously, no two parents will have the exact same role and relationship with their own children. Some children are very independent at a young age, needing only space, respect, and support to blossom. Other children constantly need attention and extrinsic motivators to push themselves through the day. Some children may be given the best possible support and upbringing possible yet still turn into “failures” as deemed by society. The connection is striking and I believe it adds insight into how we should evaluate coaches. For example, when a child finds success in life, does well on a test, gets into their dream college, or even makes good friends – do we credit the parents or child?
Back to the court, so who's the best coach in Ghana? Will you go for Lawal Brimah because he's coached at the national level and his team has turned the Accra league into a practice facility? or you'll want to argue that he got some of the best players there are in the country and so winning became an easy task for him? Then don't forget our Cape Coast Hoops brothers, they perennially put up teams that suffer their only loss to CEPS, is because of coaching that they too beat everybody? Then lets take a little trip back to the coach = parent analogy, who's the better parent? Coach Lawal who's kids bring home all the awards at the speech day(trophies) or Coach Kweku Jackson who's Holy Family manages to get an honorable mention from the principal because the managed to make it to the next class (D1) with not so much talent?
In sports, sometimes the greatest coaching jobs are sometimes done by those in no position to win a title. Isn’t the role of a coach to be the leader and maximize the talent and potential of each member of a team? Coaches can’t suit up and play (unless you’re player-coach like Feranmi Olunlunyo) so I really think you need to look at far more than just their Win-Loss record. Obviously, the best coaches should be winning more than they are losing, but it is a fallacy to judge the strength of coaching based on the talent on the team.
No question – coaching is an art form on its own. It is the blending of numerous different factors (scouting, media, player relations,...) Are they important? Teams need a guiding force, both a leader in terms of X’s and O’s as well as an emotional backbone. On a global level, there will never be one way to coach, just as there is no one way to parent. I believe the best coaches are those who can take their own talents and abilities and mesh them to fit the needs of their players and the fan base.
...Do we have good coaches in Ghana?
