National Basketball Referees Association Forced to Change Its Website.

WASHINGTON -- The National Basketball Referees Association (NBRA), which represents the active referees of the National Basketball Association (NBA), today announced that it will make several significant changes to its recently launched website, www.nbarefs.org, at the request of the NBA.

The NBRA website was publicly unveiled on November 10, 2004. It was established to keep NBRA members informed about the activities of the association, and officiating in the NBA and other professional sports leagues. The site also serves as a resource for visitors interested in becoming a referee, and fans interested in learning more about professional basketball referees.

To avoid infringing on the NBA's asserted intellectual property rights, the NBRA will be moving its website to www.ProBasketballRefs.com and www.TheNBRA.com. At the league's request, the NBRA is also discontinuing two sections of the site that had become instant fan favorites -- Rules and Ask-A-Ref, which focused on professional and other basketball rules.

Lamell McMorris, the NBRA's official spokesman, said, "The NBA felt that its referees should not publicly comment on, or offer interpretations of, the league's playing rules, and asked us to stop doing so on our website. In the interest of getting along, we agreed to the NBA's request. It is unfortunate, however, because the Rules and Ask-A-Ref sections of the site were extremely popular with many basketball fans, and we had asked several well-regarded former NBA referees to work with us on those parts of the site. We developed these features, because the referees wanted to offer a meaningful and interactive dialog with sports fans. In fact, over the past month, we have been overwhelmed with both emails and regular mail from visitors to the site, asking the referees about rules, calls made during games, and basketball officiating in general.

"In the five weeks since the site has been available, we have been averaging approximately 40,000 hits and 1,200 visitors per week. We believe that this speaks to the tremendous public interest in the work of our referees. We had hoped that the NBA would want to build off this early success, and we are still hopeful that this can be arranged down the road. The fans have spoken, and they love Ask-A-Ref and some of the other features on the site. If we can get the NBA's support, we are hoping to reinstate these types of interactive elements. Until then, we'll keep at it, and try to add other innovative features that we know people will appreciate."

About the NBRA

The National Basketball Referees Association represents 62 active and 14 retired referees who officiate all of the games for the National Basketball Association. Additional information is available on the NBRA's website, currently www.nbarefs.org, and soon to be found at www.ProBasketballRefs.com and www.TheNBRA.com.