The Only Good Official

Sid Borgia started calling pro games in 1946 and left twenty years later, widely acknowledged as one of, if not the, greatest officials in the history of professional basketball. At 5' 7" tall, he never backed down to anyone and will always be remembered as a giant of the game.

CHARLEY ECKMAN: "Most of the officials in the 1940s were like Chuck Solodare. He had false teeth and he had to stop and take out his teeth before he blew the whistle. Because it was such a pain to mess with his teeth, he only blew the whistle about eight times a night - just enough to keep traffic moving.

Then came Sid Borgia. I worked with Sid as an official. Later, I saw him from the other side when I became coach at Fort Wayne. Sid told me two things: First, "Let the players decide the game." He didn't get caught up in all the details and rules. His idea was to keep play moving, that no one bought a ticket to watch free throws. The other thing he said was, "Make the tough call on the road."

Sid had a barrel of guts. He didn't care if he made a call that brought the house down on him. If that was what he thought was the right call, he made it and then took the abuse."

JOE GUSHUE: "You could not intimidate Sid. He was a banty little rooster who never took a step back from anyone. The players knew that Sid worked a unique style of game. They'd see him and say, "Sid's here. That means we can really pound the boards. We can get away with this and that."

I felt there were nights when Sid went out to see how few fouls he could call. He still had control of the game, but players went over each other's backs for rebounds. If you drove down the middle, you were fair game. There were nights when he had fights in his game, but not as many as you'd think, given how loosely he called it.

It was as if Sid had a second sense, he knew when to step in and take control. He'd call a technical, maybe even throw a guy out if he had to, but he would bring order back to the court."

EARL STROM: "Sid Borgia was the godfather of officials. He broke me in. He broke in a lot of guys. He had strong opinions about how the game should be officiated, and an even stronger personality on the court. He set the tone for the rest of us who came after him."

JOE GUSHUE: "The philosophy was, "At the end of the game, don't make a call that can be blown out of proportion." So you gave the players more lattitude in the final moments. It's a terrible thing to say, but it's how we were taught to call the games. The intent of the game was that the best team on that night would win, not that the game would be decided because an official made a ticky-tack foul in the final seconds and put a guy on the foul line."

NORM DRUCKER: "Our rules were: Don't call three seconds unless it affected a play. Don't call traveling unless a player gained an advantage from it. Don't blow the whistle just to blow it."

PETE D'AMBROSIO: "Sid sometimes carried things to an extreme. The dribbler would trip and fall down. Then Sid would blow the whistle and say, "It's not a travel because you were tripped." Then Sid would say to the defender, "It's not a foul because you didn't mean to trip him." Sid would then give the ball out of bounds back to the offense and continue the game as if nothing had happened. He kind of made up his own rules."

JOHN VANAK: "Sid would yell, "Nah . . . nah . . . nah," before he made most calls. George Yardley heard him do that and said to me, "Sid makes all that noise first because he's still trying to make up his mind what he's going to call."

SLICK LEONARD: "Sid called you by name. He'd say, "Nice shot, Bobby." Or he'd say, "Nah . . . nah . . . nah, Bobby, you can't grab his arm like that. Don't look at me, you know you did it."

RUDY LARUSSO: "I'd never seen an official like Sid. The calls he made - "The ball went off you, but Jackie pushed you, so you get to keep possession." Wow. I respected Sid a lot, but he was the King of the Makeup Call. If he blew one, you knew he'd even it up at the other end. That was his way of trying to be fair."

SID BORGIA: "When I came into the league, they didn't have a rule book. They handed us a college rule book and said we'd follow these rules, with certain exceptions. When it came to zone defenses, the rule said, "No zone defenses allowed." It was up to us to decide what was a zone. We eventually decided that a zone meant that a defensive player could not stand in the lane for more than three seconds, unless he was guarding someone. The early officials were the pioneers of figuring out how this game should be called.

In my first ten years as an official, the stigma for officials was "homer". It was nearly impossible to win on the road. Officials were introduced as "Sid Borgia from New York City." So I'd be working a Knicks game in Philadelphia, and before I even made a call against Philadelphia, the crowd would come down on me because they figured I favored the Knicks because I was from New York. If you called a technical, the public address announcer would say, "And that technical foul on Red Auerbach was called by Sid Borgia." Again, the fans were at your throat. Fans believed they had the right to come to a game and hang the officials on a cross. It took a lot of intestinal fortitude to stand up to all that pressure.

What I brought to the NBA was common sense. Fans want to see action, so I let things go. I'd let two centers beat the hell out of each other. I had games where Harry Gallatin and Vern Mikkelsen would say, "Let us go." Both guys spoke Polish, and they'd be swearing at each other and at me. Usually, I just ignored them and they settled things between themselves. But what I made sure to do was let all the players get away with the same things. I wanted to be consistent and be fair on the road. That was how you got respect from the players and coaches."

Spike, I was afraid you were going to say...."...is a dead official..."

LACelt

Sometimes what you don't say packs more wallop than what you do say.

It's not really on point, but one of my favorite all time sayings is by Yukio Mishima: "To know and not to say is yet to know." It has nothing to do with this post but it reverberates in my brain, even more in these times, when they'd hang me on a cross if I wrote what I really think about what's going on in the world.

Here's another one about Zen (Are you listening, Phil?): "Those who know don't say. Those who say don't know."

spike

Here's another Zen saying: "You can't climb the ladder of success with your hands in your pockets."

Spike,

I believe the part about calling them the same way for both teams. Sometimes the calls he made didn't shock you as much as the fact that he made a call after letting the game run for a while. So the surprise factor often gave his calls the importance of proclamations.

Although Red and Sid had famous ongoing battles, I never thought Sid was biased against the Celtics. In fact, I credited Sid with being an external "continuity" factor that facilitated the withering tempo the Celtics usually maintained.

Today, it seems any gathering momentum is more greatly slowed by whistle interruptions, despite the fact that there were more
fouls called and more free throws taken per game in Cousy's first season than today. The game certainly takes longer to play for some reason, and I believe the theatrics of today's refs (and filibustering rebuttals by the players) are part of the reason. Sid would have none of that rebuttal crap.

I was delighted to be able to express my respect for Sid when I met him after his retirement when he was running a flower shop in the old Barbizon Plaza Hotel on Central Park South in NYC. He was a nice guy to talk to and obviously had some pretty fond memories of his jousts with Red.

Sam