You know, it seems like NBA fans spend far too much time hating referees and far too little time trying to understand them. You think Dirk Nowitzki is under an intense amount of pressure to win a championship? What about the short, fat, balding guy who can blow his whistle once or twice and make 20,000 people want to kill him? And I mean kill him in the most vile and painful ways imaginable. As somebody who regularly finds himself facing angry mobs full of pitchfork-wielding maniacs bent on his gruesome murder, let me tell you: It ain't easy.

I'll probably never meet Zach Zarba, or Mark Wunderlich, or Tommy Nunez, or Jess Kersey...which would make psychoanalysis pretty difficult. But while I can't give you a peek into the inner workings of their unknowable minds, I can explain what all those wild hand and arm gestures they use actually mean. So here's part one of our newest ongoing series: Know your signals.

The illegal forearm is one of the easiest calls to recognize. The referee basically looks like he's holding an invisible beer in such a way as to suggest he's just about to take an invisible drink. Only he's really stiff, kind of like a robot pretending to be a human being who's about to take a drink from an invisible beer. See? Totally obvious.


Fun with officiating: Go here to see referee stats, including the top five homers!

Labels: gesticulation, Know your signals, officiating