Basketball League to Hire Foreign Refs
By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
The Korean Basketball League (KBL) plans to hire a foreign referee from next season to help improve the quality of officiating, something now drawing frequent complaints from players and coaches alike.
The league also plans to increase the number of Korean referees to 30 from the current 24 and is considering raising their wages and improving their working conditions, KBL officials said.
``We are in no way suggesting that the job performance of KBL referees is below standard compared to leagues in other countries, but we would like them to be a little smoother in refereeing games without disrupting the flow and context,'' said Shim Hyun-soo, KBL's director of officiating.
``Bringing in foreign referees with more experience could also give Korean referees a chance to learn while making a healthy, competitive environment that will help improve the quality of officiating,'' he said.
According to the league, former National Basketball Association (NBA) referee Jesse Thompson was sent to the Philippines last week where he will choose a referee to work in Korea among potential candidates from the referees of the country's professional basketball league.
Thompson, 71, who has been acting as a technical consultant for KBL since the 1998-99 season, is expected to come back to Korea at the end of the month with a candidate list. The league will choose a foreign referee by the end of August.
Complaints about officiating have been growing in recent years to the point where the league adopted a NFL-style instant replay system for the first time in this year's playoffs that allows referees to reverse a call after reviewing the play on recorded video.
However, with Busan KTF Magic Wings and Ulsan Mobis Phoebus both submitting official protests to the league over a number of calls from Game 5 of their league championship series, this was not enough to silence questions about officiating.