https://www.tomthefinder.com/p/the-nba-is-saying-trust-us-should

A while back, I decided to map every NBA referee and track where they went to college. Did any of them overlap with NBA stars? I thought that might be an interesting thread to pull on. I wondered if the NBA would ever let those officials work those games when they share an alma mater with a star player.

Turns out there were. Two overlaps in particular caught my eye back in the 2016-17 season: James Harden’s Arizona State and Kawhi Leonard’s San Diego State. Longtime official Billy Kennedy went to ASU while two officials Bill Spooner and Rodney Mott attended Leonard’s San Diego State.

I was curious: Did the San Diego State refs, Mott or Spooner, ever work a Leonard game? I pulled up the game logs and scanned for the referees in the box scores.

You know that scene at the end of Usual Suspects, the one when Detective Palminteri drops his coffee mug once he realizes the true identity of Keyzer Soze? That was me when I saw that the officials on an April 17, 2017 playoff game between the San Antonio Spurs and Memphis Grizzlies: Bill Spooner, Dan Crawford and Rodney Mott.

That’s right: the NBA put not one, but two San Diego State alums on a Kawhi game. That wasn’t just any old basketball exhibition. That was the infamous “Take That For Data” game, the one in which Memphis Grizzlies coach David Fizdale famously unleashed an explosive postgame rant blasting officials.

Fizdale’s chief complaint? Leonard, who scored a playoff-career-high 37 points, tallied more free throws than the entire Memphis Grizzlies team.

This seems like a pretty easy landmine for the NBA referee ops to navigate around. In fact, Referee Magazine once listed its conflicts of interests to avoid for officials.

The No. 1 on the list?

Alma mater.