There is an old adage in the world of journalism, that every now and then, a story just writes itself. The story is so good or the quotes are so good, you just weave it together and let the story 'do the talkin'."
That is the case today as I pass along the CNN.Sports Illustrated.com piece written by Jack McCallum, the Hall of Fame basketball writer for SI and SI.com:
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Page-turning back story
Ref Delaney details undercover work in riveting book
Posted: Friday January 4, 2008 11:37AM; Updated: Friday January 4, 2008 4:57PM
In my two decades as an NBA scribe (scribe, incidentally, being the gently
derisive term that Steve Nash uses to describe ink-stained wretches), I've
always felt a kinship with the referees. We are both a peripheral part of
a game dominated by millionaires (though the zebras are less peripheral)
and we both attract attention mainly when we do something wrong (though
they get more attention).
I was closer to the older generation of retired refs (Jake O'Donnell,
Eddie T. Rush, Bernie Fryer and the late Earl Strom to name a few) and
remain closer to the more senior members of the current crew, especially
Joey Crawford, Steve Javie and Dick Bavetta. There is a reason for this
beyond the obvious fact that we are chronological contemporaries: The
league has gradually discouraged contact between refs and the media,
preferring that the striped-shirts be just that -- background scenery to
the main event. That's a shame because many of these guys are fascinating
personalities who bring unique life experiences to the job.
In the case of Bob Delaney, a 20-year veteran, that is a vast
understatement. In fact, few personalities in the world of sports, or the
world in general, have a more captivating back story than Delaney, whose
league-desired anonymity will diminish -- if not disappear entirely --
with the Feb. 4 release of his autobiography, Covert: My Years
Infiltrating The Mob.
With the help of co-author Dave Scheiber, a fine Florida-based journalist,
Delaney, a former New Jersey state trooper, tells his tale lucidly and,
best of all, understatedly. Delaney/Scheiber followed a cardinal rule of
writing: The better the material, the more it should speak for itself. The
writerly touches belong, I suspect, to Scheiber, but the blood-chilling
drama about his time spent undercover with New Jersey Mafia types comes
from Delaney's soul, his memory and, to be sure, a mountain of audio tapes
that helped bring down the jaw-breakers and law-breakers who formed his
social circle during three years of undercover work in the mid-1970s.
Delaney resists what would've been the simplistic notion of tying his
current occupation to his previous one. Well, dear reader, after dealing
with guys who would put a slug in my chest as easy as they'd say hello,
I'm here to tell you that calling a technical on Rasheed Wallace isn't so
difficult. Delaney is an excellent official but others are just as good,
and they didn't spend three years wearing a wire around stone-cold
killers. But it's beyond obvious that you learn quite a bit about
composure and demonstrating grace under pressure when your every waking
breath is spent wondering if your next breath is your last one.
"The development of your off-court personality is a reflection of your
on-court personality," Delaney said on Thursday when we chatted by phone
about the book. "I'm sure the situations I dealt with during my undercover
years help me as an official because I understand how to function when I'm
under pressure."
No ref is immune from criticism -- Delaney describes an incident in
Madison Square Garden when his own mother hooted at him for blowing a foul
call Patrick Ewing, her favorite player -- but his street cred with
players and coaches is demonstrably apparent.
"I used to argue with Bob a lot," Boston Celtics coach Doc Rivers said.
"Then I found out what he used to do and thought, 'I don't think he's
going to be too affected by what I'm saying over here on the sideline.' "
A few years ago, Grant Hill, then with the Orlando Magic, jokingly patted
down Delaney during a timeout and asked, "You still wired, Delaney?" The
ref answered, "Yeah, I'm wired, and the last time I wore a wire, 50 people
went to jail."
Several years ago during a TNT game Delaney was working, the announcers
spotted Kobe Bryant talking to the referee after a foul call and theorized
that the Los Angeles Lakers' star was giving Delaney "an earful" about the
call. "In reality," Delaney said, "Kobe was asking what it was like
wearing a wire all the time, and saying, 'That had to be wild.' "
It was wild. Kobe should read the book.
Before getting the whole story in Covert (the title comes from the surname
that Delaney adopted during the joint state police-FBI sting operation), I
knew a little bit about his background and that informed my observations
of him as a referee. I couldn't help but wonder what Delaney was thinking
when, say, the fifth guard on a bad team would berate him for making a
traveling call. After what he had been through -- facing the prospect of
death and, almost as bad, starting to "lose sight of the line where Bob
Delaney ended and Bobby Covert began," as he writes in the book -- how can
he take a call in a basketball game seriously?
But he does, and that is one of the messages (I'm not going to call them
lessons) of Covert: that sports is an endless proving ground where
professionalism matters. Delaney describes a moment early in his
officiating career when he made an end-of-the-game call that, hours later,
upon further review in his lonely hotel room, he found to be wrong. The
fact that he blew a "gamer," the officials' term for a call that decides
an outcome, put a knot in his stomach and cost him a night of sleep.
"In my profession," Delaney writes, "there's no worse feeling in the
world."
Delaney's undercover life was spent in that same agitated state, wondering
if he'd be found out the next day, worrying that he was losing what he
describes as "the tug of war within," trying to ingratiate himself to the
very people he was trying to bring down, thereby experiencing some form of
the Stockholm syndrome. I can't imagine what a life it was, but it's all
laid out in Covert.
And when I put it down, I was glad that the same era that gave us Tim
Donaghy, a weasel of a law-breaker, has also given us Bob Delaney, a
stand-up guy in a difficult profession.
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