Why spoilt brat NBA players are setting a bad example for next generation

I’ve been around basketball in one capacity or another since I was nine. It quickly became my sport.

I fell in love with the game and absorbed myself in its world. Now, 25 years later, I’m still in love with the game. I’m still playing in a local team and still coaching the school teams where needed.

The game has changed drastically since I started in the 1990s. The biggest change the game has seen, especially for Australian audiences, is the accessibility. Thanks to streaming services, social media and the internet, basketball is the most available it has ever been.

Our youth are absorbing the game, watching the teams and idolising the stars. It is ensuring the game continues to live on in the hearts of many.

The irony is, this access that we have also highlights the one element that hasn’t seemed to change; the poor sportsmanship and attitude we continue to have towards our referees.

Watching the first play-in match between the Atlanta Hawks and Orlando Magic demonstrated the same arrogance and disrespect athletes have towards officials; the same behaviour we have been trying to stamp out of every sporting code for decades.

Trae Young with 4:47 left in the fourth quarter let his frustration out towards the referees and earned two quick tech fouls and consequently was ejected from the game. The manner he received these fouls is disgraceful.

His first came after a few words and throwing the ball forcefully to the umpire. Young was angry announcing after the match if “[they see a foul, [they] should call a foul. That’s pretty much all it was for me.”

This technical is a release of emotion. It happens on a regular basis. Players and coaches upset at a decision. It’s a high-pressure situation fuelled by adrenaline, the intensity of the crowd, the demand to succeed. It doesn’t excuse the behaviour but it’s a high-stake business. Anthony Edwards has 19 technical fouls this season alone. They happen and no one seems to bat an eye lid at them.

Young’s second technical however, displays the arrogance high paid athletes have in treating officials, in treating other human beings, who are simply doing their job to the best of their ability. After his first technical, the ball was rolled from one end of the court to the other, from one official to another.

Young blatantly kicked the ball out of the umpire path. Then to further humiliate, Young picked up the ball as the umpire went to pick it up.

Imagine thinking you have the right to humiliate people on the basis you get paid more. That you are more valuable or more important that you can treat people however you like. Why have we allowed athletes to express frustration like this with limited consequences?

For each technical foul, players are issued a small fine. After 16 techs in a season players receive a one game suspension.

Admittedly, stronger rules and consequences have entered the league to try to stamp out this behaviour. It’s the Rasheed Wallace rule who in the 2000/01 season had 41 tech fouls and Wallace holds the record for most career ejections with 29. Progress has been made but we still allow this pattern of umpire abuse and humiliation as if it’s a normal part of everyday life.

In no other profession can one act and talk the way these athletes do towards other people and not receive the consequences. We act like this happens everywhere. The boys will be boys’ mentality (though female athletes are also prone to umpire abuse).

The NBL – the Australian basketball league – has been working hard to stamp out umpire abuse. CEO David Stevenson claims the league “will have zero tolerance for the abuse of referees, full stop” and believes “the influence on the next generation” is the “key reason to ensure fair and proper treatment of the league’s on-court officials.”

As a teacher, I’ve seen the influence social media has on our youth and seeing the behaviour of our athletes, like Young, and how they treat those around them filters down to our grass roots programs. They celebrate the way the athletes do – cue LeBron’s ‘Silencer’ celebration. These I can handle, but the way they treat and speak to umpires is damaging. Most sports at the grass roots level are struggling to field umpires.

For an organisation that has a program (NBA Cares) that promotes ‘teams, players, coaches and volunteers positively impacting and contributing to their communities’ they don’t seem to care about the repercussions of athlete actions.