Welcome to the Rinner NBA show and today you got a very special guest. He is the editor of the vertical dot com. You can also listen to his podcast, the vertical podcast with

Wode Adrian Wodejanski nobody's more plugged in on all things going on in the NBA. We've got some big stories to talk to him about today. Hey, Adrian, thanks for coming on, man.

Chris, thank you. Have me, man. Good to be here.

So you dropped one yesterday, referees union charging NBA's allowing Mark Cuban to wield power over refs via threats and intimidation. You were able to attain some documents that came out from the

way. I guess I guess I documents you were not supposed to see there's supposed to be internal that I'm going on with the referees when you first find out about this story when you're reading through the documents, what are you thinking?

Well, Chris, it's been this is better than ongoing.

Issue between.

You know, the referees association, the referees union, the league office and Cuban and the story is a little bit broader than Cuban. There's a question he was the headline he is the headline to the story.

But the broader story here is the referee feeling with Cuban front and center in this way, but others that it's become open season on them and and the last drop you read through the memos and you talk to people.

The last straw for them was January 30th in.

Houston when docking off the rivers or both thrown out of the game and given the language that the referee report.

He was thrown out and then often not leaving the court kind of going back at the reps needing security guy and then JJ ready to come pull him off that there were no additional penalties there in April.

And I found this in my reporting April 15th, a league issue to memo last year calling for essentially an enhanced penalties that they had agreed that there had been.

And then we've been in escalation in how people, whether it was owners, coaches, executives, players, anybody around that court area, how they were interacting with reps and that it had gone that it was getting a little bit out of hand.

So a lot of that conversation and sort of the walk up to that and you see it in the memos and then in my reporting.

A lot of it was centered around the referees association complaints about Cuban and they list a litany of episodes, courtside, app maverick games with him and reps that the union really was pushing for the lead to deal with it.

And that memo that directive from the legal office in April, which was not public until I reported it, it stayed quiet.

You know, spoke to a enhanced penalties and they felt the referees association felt in the time last year after that that it did calm down.

It did kind of put people back in their heels a little bit. The maverick's were also eliminated.

They weren't in the playoffs very long. So that kind of put it to bed for last season and then they felt this year it started up all again that were incidents with episodes with Cuban, with Robert Sarber and Phoenix and the referees felt like they were, you could see the in the sequence of memos.

They're frustration with the legal office, but the issues with Cuban go back a long time. This isn't new, but it has come to a head from the referees association's point of view.

When they're asking for increased penalties, are we talking money?

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