Basketball Officiating – Balance Is Key

Basketball officiating is of course very different from martial arts, but it too requires that you know the principle of maintaining balance.

In the 1984 film The Karate Kid, Mr. Miyagi (played by the late Pat Morita) emphasized the virtue of balance when teaching karate to young Daniel (Ralph Macchio). As he was standing on one foot in the waters at the beach trying to make kicks into the huge waves (and not having too much luck), Daniel thought that Mr. Miyagi was just talking about literal balance. But later on in the film, we learned that Miyagi was talking about having balance in every aspect of a person’s life; be it karate, sports, schoolwork, or relationships with one’s peers, family, spouse, or potential spouse.

As an official, it will be up to you to provide balance to the game. You must make calls quickly and fairly. You must be in a zone to assess the game and yourself. Your balancing act will be the execution of your position, your mechanics, your calls, your situational awareness, and those of your partners.

But maintaining balance doesn’t stop when the last buzzer sounds on the court. You will also be in a state of self-assessment between games, again re-evaluating your positioning and situational awareness and those of your basketball officiating partners as you review the previous game.

Balance is also important in your own personal development as well. If you achieve the rare state of mind of having mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual balance in your life, you will know it because it will show in all aspects of your life, not just the court.

Basketball Officiating – Life As An Official

But you cannot have balance in your life if you are not honest with yourself. As you assess your own basketball officiating, are you really being objective about your calls and your situational awareness? Are you really challenging yourself to do better or are you making excuses for a game that could have gone better? Have you truly become more active from one game to the next? Do you rely on the opinions of others to measure your performance by? How do you know that you are not being dishonest with yourself?

Professional basketball officials know that just because they are not basketball players does not mean that they don’t have to train as players train. Many of the principles that apply to the training of a basketball player can also apply to the training of an official. Why shouldn’t it? It takes a well-trained body, a sharp eye, and a clear head to perform basketball officiating well, just as it does to play basketball.

In the Basketball Officiating Success System, I share a lot of tips on how you can maintain balance in your basketball officiating performance and in the game on the court. You will learn the tools of objective self-assessment that I had to learn the hard way over a 40-year career on the Division I and NBA levels.

Basketball Officiating Innovation

Sometimes it takes a little innovation to do a really good self-assessment of your own performance on the court. I’ve found that it really helps to have an outsider help set the standards by which I should be judged. This way, you can avoid being dishonest with yourself. You will learn some tips that will help you in gaining a thorough self-assessment, and you will also learn how to achieve balance in your basketball officiating skills in ways that you would never have thought of before (I know I wouldn’t have.)

Balance of your mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being is a state of mind achieved only by a few, yet it is absolutely critical if you want to be a successful basketball referee. Basketball officiating is a work of art that shows itself on a level that not many people are aware of, yet they can feel it every time goes smoothly and well. Most people won’t even be aware of your efforts and success on the court, but the ones that DO notice it will be the ones who will be looking to hire someone to officiate at the Division I or professional level. That could be you!

Are you ready to discover the tips that will help you to achieve balance in your basketball officiating? Are you willing to listen to others who have been where you want to be and can offer you their insight? If the answer is ‘yes’ (and I’m pretty sure it is), then don’t put it off anymore. The answers to your basketball officiating is here.

Invest in the Basketball Officiating Success System; learn the tools within the System, and most importantly, implement them and I can guarantee that you will be seriously looked at by Division I and NBA scouts. You’ll have confidence in your game and in all other aspects of your life and it will show in your performance on the court with basketball officiating.