Norm Drucker

• 1. Introduction

  ›

  Norm Drucker was born on the 4th of July, 1920, in New York City, and died on the 6th of February, 2015. In the span of those 94 years, he became one of the most consequential figures in the history of professional basketball officiating. He did not earn that status from a comfortable distance. He earned it on courts where fans rushed the floor, where a Syracuse regular nicknamed "The Strangler" ran up and down the sidelines screaming abuse at officials, and where Drucker and his officiating partner would sometimes wrap their belts around their fists, buckles forward, just to get out of the building after a home-team loss. Who was this man who spent 35 years shaping how professional basketball was called, watched, and paid for? And how did a Brooklyn kid who learned the game in an era with no shot clock, no goaltending rule, and a jump ball after every basket end up officiating eight deciding championship games and negotiating the first collective bargaining agreement in the history of NBA referees?

• 2. Brooklyn Roots

  ›

  Erasmus Hall High School in Flatbush, Brooklyn, was where Drucker first put on a uniform and played organized basketball, starting in 1937. The game he learned bore little resemblance to the modern sport. There was no 3-second rule, goaltending was entirely legal, and play stopped for a jump ball after every made basket. His Erasmus team reached the quarterfinals during his 1938 season. Those who knew him from those years called him a legend of Brooklyn basketball.

  From Erasmus he went to City College, where he played as a 5-foot-11 guard. As a junior varsity freshman, his coach Sam Winograd described him as a scrapper who played hustling ball. He then moved to the varsity under Nat Holman, a Hall of Fame coach who in the 1930s had been called the world's best basketball player.

  One of Drucker's teammates at City College was Red Holtzman, then known as Bill, who would go on to coach the New York Knicks into the Hall of Fame. The 1941-1942 City College team ranked third in the country and went to the National Invitation Tournament, which was at that time the premier collegiate basketball event in the United States. They lost to Western Kentucky 49-46. The New York Times described Drucker, a part-time starter, as aggressive, alert, and spirited.

  In January 1943, World War II cut his college career short. He served for three and a half years, leaving as a first lieutenant. After the war, he completed a bachelor's degree in science from CCNY.

• 3. From Player to Whistle

  ›

  After his discharge, Drucker played professionally for the Troy Celtics in the New York State Professional Basketball League. The team's promotional materials called him "the fastest man playing basketball today" and nicknamed him "Reindeer," a nickname that did not stick. He was later traded to the Trenton Tigers of the American Basketball League and played on their 1946-47 championship team.

  The transition to officiating came next. In 1949, Drucker began calling AAU, high school, collegiate, and American Basketball League games. An early milestone came when he and Hall of Fame referee Pat Kennedy officiated a straight-competition game in which the Harlem Globetrotters defeated the College All-Stars. Two years later he called one NBA game. In 1953, he moved up to a full NBA schedule.

  That first year told him exactly what he was getting into financially. NBA rookie officials earned $35 per game in 1953, with top veterans getting $50. A full 70-game rookie season netted $2,450. That figure was 29 percent less than the 1953 U.S. median family income of $4,000. For most officials, the NBA was their second job. For Drucker, the other job was as a teacher and administrator in the New York City School System.

  When he asked then-NBA President Maurice Podoloff for a raise of $5 per game, Podoloff replied, "What are you trying to do, bankrupt the NBA?" Podoloff made the same remark, near-verbatim, when Drucker returned asking for $10 a game during the 1956-1957 season, reportedly pounding his desk for emphasis.

• 4. Hostile Arenas

  ›

  By the early 1960s, Drucker was regularly calling two to four games in the NBA Finals each season, but the road to those assignments ran through some genuinely dangerous buildings. The Syracuse Nationals had a fan nicknamed "The Strangler" who had once actually tried to choke a college referee. Drucker recalled him running up and down the sidelines during games, screaming at officials. In that environment, Drucker and his officiating partner would exit the court after a Syracuse loss with their belts wrapped around their fists and the buckles visible, ready to use as weapons if needed.

  The threat was not limited to Syracuse. On the 15th of November, 1958, in Detroit, a fan ran onto the court after a two-point Piston loss and threw a punch at Drucker. On the 24th of February, 1964, in Los Angeles, Drucker was mauled and kicked as he was leaving the dressing room at halftime, though his injuries were not serious enough to stop him from finishing the game. Later that spring, a fan tangled with Drucker and fellow referee Richie Powers as they left the court after San Francisco defeated St. Louis in a playoff game. After the Lakers defeated the Celtics in game 5 of the 1966 NBA Finals in Boston on the 24th of April, a group of hostile spectators confronted Drucker and Earl Strom.

  Drucker did not merely endure this environment. He described in a 1969 Newsday interview a part of himself that actually relished calling a foul against the home team and then standing alone on the court, defying the hometown crowd. That self-described quality, the loner temperament willing to stand against 18,000 fans, was one he would later identify as central to making a great referee.

• 5. Red Auerbach and the Wilt Ejection

  ›

  In the late 1950s and into the early 1960s, the press regularly covered what it called a heated feud between Drucker and Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach. It reached a formal resolution on the 13th of November, 1961, when Drucker's second ejection of Auerbach within a single month led NBA President Maurice Podoloff to suspend the coach for three games.

  For all the friction with Auerbach, Drucker's most singular act of officiating courage involved a different legend. On the 3rd of January, 1962, Drucker became the only referee ever to eject Wilt Chamberlain from an NBA game. The sequence began when fellow referee Earl Strom issued Chamberlain a first technical foul. Drucker then added a second technical and an ejection after Chamberlain suggested that Strom must be betting on the game. When Chamberlain responded to the ejection with a profane remark, Drucker added a third technical. Chamberlain had played every minute of every game that season up to that ejection. He was out for 8 minutes and 33 seconds. It was the only time across 14 years of NBA play that Chamberlain was disqualified from a game, whether by personal or technical fouls.

  From 1963 through 1977, Drucker was recognized alongside Mendy Rudolph and Earl Strom as one of the three best referees in professional basketball. The Sporting News described another official as someone who belonged in the company of Rudolph, Drucker, and the late Earl Strom. Drucker officiated the deciding game of league championships eight times: four in the NBA, in 1963, 1965, 1966, and 1968, and four in the ABA, in 1971, 1972, 1974, and 1976.

• 6. The ABA Gamble

  ›

  In 1969, the two-year-old American Basketball Association was aggressively recruiting NBA talent. Drucker, along with three other NBA lead referees, Joe Gushue, Earl Strom, and John Vanak, took the risk and jumped to the financially uncertain new league. Their contracts were the first multi-year officiating contracts in the history of professional basketball.

  The financial terms reflected Drucker's standing. His combined salary as a referee and Supervisor of Officials, plus a $25,000 signing bonus, was more than double the average NBA player's salary at the time. According to the book "Basketball in America," the average NBA player earned $35,000 in 1969. Drucker's deal made him the highest-paid referee in the history of basketball at that point. Within a year, the salaries of all other professional basketball officials more than doubled as well.

  While officiating in the ABA, Drucker also held a day job as Supervisor of Recreation for New York City's school system. There, he was credited as largely responsible for establishing the first sports programs that integrated blind children with sighted peers to play basketball and other sports. To make it work, his team placed a bell on the backboard and, as Drucker explained in a nationally syndicated column, inside the ball itself.

  When the ABA-NBA merger came in 1976, only a handful of ABA referees were retained by the NBA. Drucker was among them. Julius Erving later noted that the NBA took the best of the ABA, naming himself, George Gervin, David Thompson, Artis Gilmore, the coaches, the three-point shot, and three referees.

• 7. The Strike and the Union

  ›

  In 1977, at 56 years old and weeks from retirement, Drucker joined 23 of the NBA's 25 other referees in a strike before the playoffs. He had no personal financial stake in the outcome. He explained at the time that he could have made a good deal for himself by not striking. Any one of the top 14 lead referees, he said, could have done the same. But if the top referees crossed the line, the bottom 14 would have no leverage and the league would tear them apart.

  After 16 days, the strike was settled and the NBA recognized the referee's union for the first time. Drucker worked the remaining 1977 playoffs and retired. He shared in none of the improved wages that followed. Within three years, the salary and benefits for each top NBA referee increased by $100,000 per year.

  Despite having walked a picket line and conducted media interviews to pressure the NBA, the league hired Drucker as its Supervisor of Officials within four months of the settlement. He held that position from 1977 to 1981, having previously served as the ABA's Supervisor from 1969 to 1973 and as the NBA's crew chief from 1967 to 1969. His tenure on the court itself lasted 24 consecutive seasons, the longest unbroken run in professional basketball history and the record for the longest tenure among referees who worked exclusively in the two-referee era.

  During his 24-year officiating career, he called 6 All-Star Games, 3 in the NBA and 3 in the ABA, a total exceeded only by Mendy Rudolph and Earl Strom, each of whom officiated seven. His total of 38 NBA and ABA championship-round games was the second highest in professional basketball history.

• 8. Building the Modern Officiating System

  ›

  As the NBA's Supervisor of Officials, Drucker became one of the first NBA executives to publicly advocate for two changes that the league eventually adopted. He pushed for the ABA's three-point basket, which the NBA adopted in 1979. He also pushed for three referees per game. The three-man system was introduced for the 1978-79 season, though the league reverted to two officials the following year. The three-official system returned in the 1988-89 season and has remained standard ever since.

  Drucker also created the first formal pro basketball referee training program, built around a partnership between the NBA and the Continental Basketball Association, then the top professional minor league. Under the arrangement, the NBA selected, trained, and financially supported the CBA officiating staff and hired the CBA's Supervisor of Officials. The downstream effects proved lasting. By 2000, nine of the 12 referees who called the NBA Finals had come through the CBA training program. By 2008-96 percent of all NBA referees had trained in NBA-affiliated minor league programs.

  He also introduced the first professionally administered psychological profiling for NBA referees, aimed at identifying the personality traits most common among great officials. One finding was that great referees needed to love the game. Drucker also observed that middle- or lower-rung players tended to make better referees than stars, because a star was too accustomed to praise and lacked the loner temperament needed to stand firm when an entire team and 18,000 fans were sure you were wrong.

  Among the referees Drucker recruited and trained who went on to long NBA careers were Joe Crawford, Bernie Fryer, Ed Middleton, Jake O'Donnell, Jack Nies, Jim Clark, Wally Rooney, and Jess Kersey. Crawford was still officiating during the 2015-16 NBA season, connecting Drucker's legacy directly to the modern game.