Angry, gritty, old school. Easily one of the NBA’s premier officials, Joe Crawford’s got issues. But there’s something else – the man knows himself, knows his weakness, and just like his approach to the game, he deals with it head-on.

Being Joe Crawford
By Jim Arehart, Referee associate editor

"I remember like it was yesterday. The Phillies were playing at the end of the season and nobody cared about the game. I never saw my father during the season except when he came to Connie Mack Stadium. My father’s behind the plate. He told me to come down and stand and wait for him by the umpire’s locker room: ‘Be there by the bottom of the eighth.’ The umpires used to have to walk up the Phillies’ dugout to get to their room. I’m just standing there waiting. My father had a beef in the ninth inning with a pitcher. The game gets over and all I hear is, ‘You f–-ing a–-hole! You f–-ing j–-off! You motherf––-!" I could hear that it was my father talking, screaming, and it’s getting closer. I could hear the click of the spikes. They’re coming closer and closer.

"I’m going, ‘Holy sh–!’ right? Really shaking. My father forgot that I was standing there. I see them come up, and now they’re holding my father back because he was going after the pitcher or the manager or whoever it was. So now he sees me all of a sudden. …" Joe Crawford pauses. He’s staring at a wall.

"I was, like, a 10-year-old kid at the time. Those kinds of things stayed with me." He pauses again and smiles. "So when I came into this (officiating), I’m saying, ‘You gotta be aggressive, you gotta be aggressive, you gotta be aggressive.’"

Flash forward 15 years or so to the late ’70s and Joe Crawford, the son of a major league umpire, is an NBA referee, young, fiery and quick with the "T." He’s working two-man stuff with veteran guys like Earl Strom, Jake O’Donnell and Joe Gushue, old-time NBA gunslingers, learning at their knee. Crawford got a reputation: For officials, he became the guy you wanted to go to war with, someone who’d have your back and take care of business. For coaches, players and league management, he became the guy handing out all the technical fouls, throwing guys out of games, a hothead, a real red-ass.

"It was a different era," Crawford says, reflecting on what became an infamous temper. "I’ve gone overboard and I’ve gone cuckoo, but what it’s always boiled down to is I just don’t appreciate players or coaches disrespecting my profession. I want them to respect my profession. I don’t know if they do. I hope they do because I respect the hell out of theirs."

He’s got Philly gravel in his voice but there’s nothing ironic about his words. "I don’t know anything about coaching or general managing or owning. I don’t know anything about it, and that’s the fascinating thing about our profession. They get to rate us, they get to yell at us, they get to take shots at my profession. But they don’t know about my profession. They don’t know a thing about it."

Crawford is intensely protective of his line of work but he’s not limited by it. A self-professed "degenerate sports junkie," Crawford will watch any game, any sport, anytime, anywhere. He admires the athletes, he’s impressed with the coaches, but he has an absolute reverence for the officials, high profile or not. Talking sports, he rattles them off – NFL referee Bill Carollo, NHL official Jay Sharrers, NCAA men’s basketball ref Jim Burr – Joe Crawford doesn’t know them personally, but he’ll tell you where they worked last month. Ask him what game, any game in history, he would have liked to have worked, and he says, "You know, Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game would have been good, but real history to me would be when Jake O’Donnell hands out his 1,000th technical. I would love to be there for something like that."

Maybe it has something to do with growing up in the celebrated Crawford family. His father, Shag, was a legend in umpiring circles, serving in the NL from 1956-75, and Joe’s older brother Jerry is currently one of the major league’s longest-tenured and most respected umpires.

So how did Joe end up in basketball officiating with those baseball bloodlines? "Don’t get me wrong," says Joe, "I’m addicted to baseball, but basketball … there’s something about it.

"Even in high school, I knew I wanted to be an NBA referee. I wasn’t the best student, but I didn’t think I’d need to be. I just wanted to referee. When I got out there and actually started (officiating), I just couldn’t get enough of it. But, again, with me it was a very difficult thing because my temper was always getting in the way.

"You’re 18 or 19 years old and you’re going into these bar leagues, and back then when I started it was one man. So you’re out there working these games and these guys you’re working are older than you, and they’re just coming out of college. I’d go in there and I’d battle, throwing people out and all that. The temper thing was difficult. Still to this day it’s something I battle. But it got to the point a few years ago when I said, ‘I’ve got to do something about this.’ Sometimes you really just have to take a good look in the mirror. I knew that my temper was my weakness and that it was going to really deter or destroy me. I had to do something about it and find the reason why I do what I do."

About eight years ago, after an altercation with a coach in which Crawford says he "flipped out," Joe decided to investigate anger management counseling.

"As a referee, you experiment in what works, and I didn’t know what worked other than to be aggressive. To be honest with you, my father wasn’t home, and that may have contributed to the (temper) problem. When I would go to the ballpark as a kid, that’s when I was with him. In going to those sessions and talking to the professionals, they said that’s what you relate to as a kid, how your father interacted with people.

"I was such a fan as a kid, the umpires and everything. When I talked to my father, I’d ask, ‘Dad, did you throw anybody out?’ I always wanted to hear about that stuff."

Crawford says he learned that he was taking things too personally when players and coaches mouthed off, learned that they’re only yelling at the shirt, not at him. It was an epiphany, but one he continues to struggle with.

"That’s fine if it’s just a shirt they’re screaming at," he says, his voice rising a little. "But to me it’s still a respect factor. They don’t respect my profession as much as I respect it. But I really don’t like having that kind of reputation. I’m not real proud of it. I don’t want the players and coaches to fear me, because I really respect those people. I really do. I really respect them as professionals and what they’ve accomplished."

The intensity in Joe’s voice softens a bit and he smiles again. "I’ve done pretty good with it. I still have flashbacks when I want to go at somebody, but it’s gotten a lot better."

Though he might be best known to your average sports fan for his fiery style on the court, Joe Crawford has another side well known to his peers and the people who’ve met him.

"No b.s., Joe’s just a real, real guy, as genuine as they come," says NBA ref Bob Delaney. Duke Callahan, another NBA official, says, "Joe’s Joe, you know? And I love him for it," a sentiment echoed by NBA ref Mark Wunderlich, when he says, "Joe’s an a–hole, but I love him."

"I am an a–hole," insists a smiling Crawford.

Although you could probably find a couple coaches or players to agree with that, his fellow officials have a lot of affection for the man (see sidebar). One in particular, Joe took a shine to. When Steve Javie entered the league 18 years ago, Crawford saw something familiar in the fiery rookie with the NFL officiating father.

"I was his crew chief his first year," remembers Crawford. "It was still two-man and we were in Utah, one of those games where you went in there as the gunslingers. And he was banging away. We got in the locker room at halftime and I looked at him and I said, ‘I was nuts, but you’re really nuts.’"

Crawford and Javie developed a close friendship, with Joe offering the benefit of his experience. "Joe was and is my mentor," says Javie. "I still remember one of the first games I did with Joe in Detroit and our boss, Darell Garretson, was there observing. After the game, Darell said we were going to go back to the hotel and watch the tape. I started thinking of all the plays I missed and that it was going to be open season on me, the youngster. Instead, Joe, with all humility and objectivity, pointed out all of his mistakes while watching the tape and made me feel so much at ease with my own. He showed me that night that even the best officials make mistakes and not to be afraid to do so. He also showed me if you can own up to your mistakes it will make you a better referee in the long run. I will never forget that tape session. Probably the most informative night for a young referee anxious to learn and get better."

At home, too, Crawford is far removed from his oncourt persona. He’s been married to Mary for 32 years and the couple has three children, Amy (28), Megan (26) and Erin (23).

For 27 of those years, Joe, like his father, has spent a good chunk of his time on the road and much of the responsibility for the household has fallen on Mary. Says Joe, "My mentor Joe Gushue said – and he used to say it in a Philly way – ‘The biggest key to this job is to have a good old lady,’ which meant your wife, and I’ve had that big-time."

"Everybody always asks me, ‘How do you live with him?’" says Mary. "On court he can be loud and obnoxious, sure, but at home he’s quiet. At home I’m the boss. And I think it’s because he’s never wanted to come home and be the bad guy. He gets enough of that at the games. His girls can get away with anything around him."

Crawford has three granddaughters, but only one grandson. "Our five-year-old grandson, Christian, he idolizes Joe," says Mary. "Everything Joe does, Christian tries to imitate. He tries to referee and he’s got a whistle just like ‘Pop.’

"When Christian stays with us, he’s got to sleep with Joe and me. This may be too much information, but Joe sleeps in his undershorts and last time Christian was here, I was getting ready for bed when I hear all this screaming laughter coming from the bedroom. I go in there and Christian’s taken off his pajamas because he wants to sleep just like Pop. I’m covering him up all night thinking he’s cold. Christian wakes up the next day and says, ‘Pop should really sleep in pajamas.’"

Romping with the grandkids? Does that sound like the same 24-year-old kid who broke into the league in 1977, who wouldn’t take any crap from anybody? Maybe Joe Crawford is mellowing.

Remember that big flap in Dallas last season? When he tossed Coach Don Nelson, and then threw Assistant Coach Del Harris a quarter later? It was all over the papers at the time. Joe Crawford says it’s the one call, actually series of calls, he wishes he could have back.

"It caused me a little problem," says Crawford. "(Nelson) walked up to halfcourt during a timeout and just stood there. I hit him with a ‘T.’ The anger management was kicking in and I just stood there, said in a low voice, ‘Go back to the bench.’ He said he wasn’t going back. I hit him with another ‘T’ and ejected him. When I look back on that, I thought (Nelson) was screwing the game up for me and my partners, and he was trying to intimidate my profession, and that’s what I ejected him for. But it’s not all about my profession. It’s about the game. The more I’m around this, the more I’m figuring this out that it’s just not about the officials, us in our little world.

"I had a dialogue with my employer after that game. I said, ‘So what did you want me to do? Wait 10 minutes until he calls me a no good motherf––-? And my employer said yes. When I left that meeting and really sat down and thought to myself, I said, ‘I can do that. I have no problem with that.’ See, because now (the NBA) has a reason to really fine the hell out of the coach, and instead I threw him out and threw Del Harris out because he was, in my opinion, disrupting the game. It may sound strange to you, and it does sound strange to a lot of our referees on the staff, but after listening to my employer, I really believe I should have done what they said. I should have waited and let (Nelson) become the aggressor, really become the aggressor, then I could have handled the situation and given (management) something to work with. You have to give them a reason to support you. I don’t know if, looking back on it, if I gave them a clear, concise reason to back me."

Is this the same Joe Crawford who once hit Cleveland’s Brad Dougherty and Larry Nance with two technical fouls each in less than a minute? ("I still can’t go to Cleveland without hearing about that," says Crawford.) Time and introspection have definitely mellowed the man.

To hear Mary talk about the legendary "Joe Crawford temper," it’s almost endearing: "I always pray he doesn’t throw anyone out of the game," says Mary, laughing. "I always say, ‘Please, no more, don’t start,’ because, you know, he can get on a roll."

Crawford is at the top of his game these days. He’s still only 52 and wants to continue officiating until he’s at least 59. Crawford has 27 seasons under his belt, same as Jess Kersey and Bernie Fryer. Only Dick Bavetta, with 28, has more. Of the current staff, Crawford has worked more playoff games (233) and Finals games (32) than anybody. When he does finally go out, he’ll be remembered as one of the best.

"I’ve got an agreement with (NBA ref) Sean Corbin," says Crawford. "I said, ‘Sean, I want you to do me a favor. Tell me when I don’t have any more relevance. That’s when I’ll retire. I don’t want them to just put me on the games because I have a good reputation and I’m an easy assignment and nobody is going to bitch. I want it that I still have relevance, that I’m still able to do the job, I’m still able to run up and down the floor. That’s the only reason I work out these days. I gotta keep up with these young guys.

"When that day comes, I’m gonna be pissed. I’ve always been a realist and I’ll accept it." Joe Crawford breaks into another wide smile. "But I figure I’ll be pissed for about a year."