Violet was nervous. No surprise. She had just stepped out of a blinding spotlight in New York where she’d been barraged by questions from hundreds of reporters. She and Dee Kantner, the other woman rookie NBA referee, patiently answered everything from the obvious: “How do you think the players will react to you?” to the ridiculous: “Do you think you can do the job?”
Minutes before that historic game in Vancouver, Violet sat in the officials’ locker room chatting with Billy Oakes and Mark Wunderlich, the other members of her crew. Rod Thorn, vice president of operations for the NBA, casually walked in.
“Hey, Violet,” Thorn said. “I want you to know that I’m not here because it’s your first game.”
“Oh no,” said Violet. “You just decided to fly all the way to Vancouver for fun.”
Everyone laughed. As Violet prepared for the opening tip, her butterflies fluttered away and reality took hold.
“It was unbelievable,” Violet recalls two years later, camped out in a leather armchair in her living room in Carson, Calif. “That whole first year was a blur.”
She laughs, loud and strong. Violet Palmer exudes strength: physical strength and strength of character. “My whole career has been kind of a blur.”
Blur as in warp speed. Violet Palmer is only 34 years old and has already completed her second year in the NBA. That’s fast. The Violet Palmer story is all about speed, and it begins with a strong launch.
Violet was raised in Compton, a tough area of Los Angeles. However, her upbringing defied her surroundings. “My friends say, ‘Violet, you grew up in Compton, but your family was like Little House on the Prairie,’” she says.
She enjoys that, confirms it. “It’s true. As a child, I never wanted for anything. I think a lot of my confidence and stability comes from my strong family background.”
Her close-knit family includes a brother, two sisters and her parents, who recently celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary. From the beginning, her family was steeped in sports. Her father was a baseball player; her mother played basketball. Her brother is the head basketball coach at her alma mater, Compton High School. Her nephew, her older sister’s son, is a Harlem Globetrotter.
Violet was a star athlete. She ran track, played softball and starred at point guard on the Compton High basketball team. She was recruited to attend Cal Poly-Pomona by the late coach Darlene May, who was also a premier women’s basketball official and the first woman to officiate an Olympic women’s basketball game. Violet was captain of the basketball team for three years and led the squad to back-to-back NCAA Division II national championships. As she approached her senior year of college, Violet started contemplating her future.
A Fast Rise
“I knew I didn’t want to play women’s basketball overseas, which was the only choice at the time,” she says. “I took a job working for the Placentia (Calif.) Recreation Department. Part of my job was to do some refereeing.”
A friend who worked for the city saw Violet in action and suggested she give officiating a more serious look. Violet took his advice and joined the Southern California officiating unit. She began by refereeing high school games. Her first year, she went all the way to the Los Angeles city semifinals. She was immediately contacted by a couple of junior college assignors.
“I think my quick rise can be attributed to being an ex-player. I caught on extremely quickly. I went to a couple of camps that summer and got into the rulebook. Everything just started to go like this (snaps her fingers).“ Violet sinks into her chair and takes a moment to reflect. Her face folds into an expression of sheer confidence and calm. Her eyes twinkle with determination. Make a choice and go for it, her eyes say. But they also seem to issue a warning: Once I make up my mind to do something, it would be best not to stand in my way.
The following summer, Violet attended the All-American Basketball Camp in Santa Clara, Calif. In attendance were supervisors from the Big West, the West Coast and Pac-10 conferences. They all watched Violet with interest; then, after the camp, they all hired her.
“After just one year of officiating high school, I’m hired to do three college conferences,” she beams. “Unheard of.”
Did being a woman help?
“When I first got into officiating, there were very few women. I think my timing was perfect,” she says.
And she strove for perfection in her athletic ability, knowledge of the rules, mastery of the mechanics and something else.
“Presence,” nods Violet. “I think I have that on the court. I know I do. I’ve never been a follower. I’ve always been a leader. I feel I have total control out there. I am in charge. I can handle anything. I got it.”
The next summer Violet went to camp again. She received a schedule that included 40 NCAA Division I games. She was on her way.
Then the hand of fate dealt her some lousy cards.
Playing first base in a coed softball game, Violet stretched for the ball on a bang-bang double play. “Guy slides into first; clips me. Blows out my knee,” she says. “I ended up in a cast from the top of my leg right down to my foot. Out for the year.”
Back From Injury
There goes my officiating career, Violet thought. Right down the tubes. You only get one shot and there goes mine.
She was wrong. All three of her supervisors were willing to wait for her.
“Until my injury, I didn’t realize how important officiating was to me. How much I really wanted to do it. That year I made a commitment to myself.”
In 1993, the summer after her injury, fully healed, Violet attended Division I women’s referee June Courteau’s camp in Minnesota. At the camp were NCAA Coordinator of Women’s Basketball Officials Marcy Weston and Kantner. Violet did extremely well at the camp, working the championship game.
When she received her schedule, she was given 50 Division I games.
Carter Rankin, her Pac-10 supervisor, remembers Violet with appreciation: “She had an extraordinary amount of talent, terrific personality and communication skills. She also had the greatest asset any official can have: anticipatory movement.”
Violet whipped through that season. The next year, 1994, Rankin took a chance and gave Violet many of the conference’s biggest games. The gamble paid off. Violet was chosen for the NCAA tournament. At the age of 29, she reached the Final Four.
“At that point, I was totally happy,” Violet says. “Everything was great. At the camps in the summer, I wasn’t even a camper anymore. I was an instructor.”
The NBA Calls
Then, one afternoon in 1995 as Violet recalls, the phone rang.
It was Aaron Wade, then-chief of staff for the CBA officials, who worked closely with the NBA in developing officials.
Violet thought it was a friend playing a joke; she waited for the punch line.
Wade said: “I’m calling because I saw you working a game on TV. I cannot believe that I have never seen you work, that I don’t know who you are.”
Violet sensed the call was for real.
“I know you’re not aware of this,” Wade continued, “but the NBA is looking to train some women. Interested?”
“I never really thought about it,” Violet responded.
Wade laughed. “Violet, when I tell people who I am and why I’m calling, they usually go crazy: ‘Oh My God! I don’t believe it! It’s Aaron Wade!’”
The conversation continued. Then Wade sent Violet tapes and rulebooks and invited her to two NBA camps.
The first camp was a shock. Violet and Kantner were the only women in attendance. At first, the players regarded them with suspicion, but by the end of day one, they responded to them as if they were simply referees. Violet grins. “By the end of camp, I was just one of the guys.”
Violet quickly discovered the gap between the women’s college game and the men’s pro game. Besides the superior speed and athleticism, there was a major difference in officiating mechanics.
“I had to become a student again,” Violet explains. “I was learning where to be, where to look. That’s when the training came in. If you learn the mechanics, you become a better referee, instantly.”
The next summer, Violet was invited back to NBA camp. This time the players barely gave her a second look. But Rod Thorn did. He called her after the camp, invited her to NBA veterans’ camp and told her she was going to work a couple of exhibition games. That is, if she wanted to.
“I definitely want to go to veterans’ camp,” Violet assured Thorn. Then she hung up the phone and said aloud, “What is veterans’ camp?”
She called a couple of officiating friends who explained that veterans’ camp is where all 58 NBA officials, plus invited nonstaff, go to train. Referees receive uniforms, fill out the requisite NBA paperwork, take physicals and do classroom training.
“I knew I would learn a lot,” says Violet. “It’d be great experience. It could only help me in my college officiating career.”
The following year, all through her college schedule, Violet found herself longing to return to veterans’ camp. “I started to think I may actually have a shot at the NBA. And then I started to want it.”
Making History
After her second veterans’ camp, she again refereed two exhibition games. Then she made a commitment to herself: “I’m going to get into the NBA. There is no doubt about it.”
She soared through the 1997 NCAA season, finishing in triumph at the national championship, Old Dominion versus Tennessee. She anticipated the invitation to NBA veterans’ camp. When she received it, she took on the challenge of camp like a woman possessed. It paid off. She got five exhibition games. While she prepared for her final exhibition in Utah, the phone rang in her hotel room: Rod Thorn.
“Violet, I hope you’re sitting down,” she remembers him saying. “We are going to bring you on staff.”
The rest, literally, was history. NBA history. Sports history.
Later that season, Billy Oakes, since retired, the crew chief of her first game, proudly showed Violet a scrapbook his family put together for him. In it was a picture of Oakes and Violet standing together courtside in Vancouver. He told Violet: “I know you cherish that first night, but you would not believe how proud I was to be part of it with you.”
Not all players, coaches and officials felt the same way.
“This is a man’s game. It should stay that way,” roared Houston’s Charles Barkley in the media.
“The biggest challenge I encountered was earning respect as a referee,” says Violet.
From everyone, including the fans. As a result of the media hype, the fans knew her name and didn’t hesitate to use it. All year she heard: “Violet, you suck!” or: “Violet, go back to the WNBA!”
“The only way to excel at refereeing in the NBA is to continually referee games,” she says. “NBA training is the best, but until you step out on that floor with those players and 20,000 fans screaming at you night after night, you can’t improve.”
She improved. Night after night. Finally, unequivocally, she proved to her peers that she deserved to be there. Ed Rush, NBA director of officiating, praised her overall performance.
“Violet,” she recalls hearing him say, “you have an incredible ability to sell yourself, even when you’re wrong. That is a great asset.”
She now takes run-ins with players in stride.
One time a player disputed a foul Violet called on him. “Violet,” he pleaded. “If you change the call, I’ll take you out on a date.”
“We can’t go out on a date,” Violet said. “And you still got the foul.” The players within earshot all laughed.
Arrival
Violet knew she had truly arrived that first year after working a game in Houston. As she walked to her car with the two men on her crew, she found herself facing Barkley.
“Violet,” he said. “I was wrong about you. I apologize. You’re all right with me.” He pointed to the two male officials, “You’re better than him and him!”
Violet Palmer laughs at the memory of the expression on her colleagues’ faces. She leans back in her chair. Her home suggests more parts to this complicated woman, a homebody side that is ordered and comfortable, with colors soft and muted, the air tinged with the sweet smell of incense. Outside, two men hack away at her front yard as they prepare to install a new brick patio. Violet seems settled. The rocket has landed.
“I have a great life. I love what I do. I can’t believe they actually pay me to do it. It’s like a dream come true. I feel truly blessed.”
She takes a small breath. As the incense wafts through the room, you notice something else about Violet Palmer, another reason for her ascension to the NBA at the speed of light: The woman is centered.
“Sometimes I look back and I just can’t believe it. I am 34. I am a black woman. I referee in the NBA. People say, ‘You’re that woman!’”
