NBA Ends Referees’ Lockout, Signs Two-Year Deal with Officials

The NBA ended its month-long referees' lockout when it reached a two-year agreement with the National Basketball Referees Association last Friday, October 23, 2009.

Not too long ago, the National Basketball Association (NBA) was faced with the prospect of opening its first season since 1995 without its regular referees as the league and the National Basketball Referees Association failed to come to terms with its new contract after the last one expired on September 1. According to an AP report posted on NBA.com, a frustrated NBA Commissioner David Stern withdrew from the negotiating table due to what he calls as ‘little bit too heated rhetorics’ and eventually prompted the league to impose a lockout on the officials which was announced last September 18. With the lockout in place, the NBA was forced to use ‘replacement’ officials sourced mostly from its farm league, the NBA Developmental League, and the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) throughout the NBA’s exhibition season which ended Friday night. Teams, fans, and the NBA front office were already bracing for a regular season with the ‘replacement’ officials who were criticized for calling too many fouls and calling things differently than the ‘normal’ officials. Fortunately, the National Basketball Referees Association reached out to the NBA last Friday and said they were coming back to work. "(But) it was requested by the other side that I return and that they were coming in to make a deal and they asked me to be there, and I thought I owed them out of my respect to them to honor that request," Commisioner Stern said. The referees union and the NBA agreed on a two-year contract last Friday, effectively ending the lockout which lasted more than a month. The NBA agreed to raise the referees’ salaries in the second year of the signed contract duration, although both sides remained apart on other issues such as the referees' pension and severance packages. The referees' contracts are usually set for five years but the NBA consented to a two-year deal this time at the request of the union who are hoping to renegotiate some of the terms when the economy gets better. "We are pleased to reach this agreement," NBA Commissioner David Stern said in a statement. "The negotiations extended further than either side had hoped, but when our regular season tips off on Tuesday we'll have the best referees in the world officiating our games."