Dick Bavetta wanted to be certain he heard his doctor right. The word was “weeks.” Not “hours.” Not even “days.” It was “weeks.” Bavetta was told to stay off his feet and rest up for several weeks with a broken nose, sustained on the job while officiating an NBA game.
“I told the doctor, ‘Not possible. I don’t miss games. I referee them,’ ” Bavetta said.
You rest for “weeks,” you don’t become the Iron Man of the NBA — of professional sports for that matter. Bavetta’s streak of 2,635 consecutive games didn’t come easy.
But after 39 seasons plus 270 playoff games (27 of them in the Finals), three All-Star Games and numerous international competitions, including the Olympics, Bavetta, 74, consulted with wife Paulette and daughters Christine and Michele in Ocala Fla., and the verdict to retire was announced this week.
Instead of using whistles and replay monitors, Bavetta intends to continue a family musical tradition: He signed up for guitar and piano lessons. And he is going to take Spanish classes at a local junior college. Maybe he wanted to know what Manu Ginobili really was saying all those years.
He rightfully admits pride in his iron-man streak, during which he passed the fabled run of Cal Ripken Jr. But that streak almost died in 1999.
The physician was Dr. Susan Scott, a prominent micro-surgeon and wife of then-Knicks team doctor, Norman Scott. She had been called in after Bavetta, on March 30, 1999, tried to break-up a fight between Indiana’s Jalen Rose and Knick Patrick Ewing at the Garden.
“I’m thinking I’m a teenager from Brooklyn still, and I jump in between them, and the punch that was intended for Patrick, I get hit by Jalen Rose. And I break my nose,” Bavetta said.
Refusing hospitalization, Bavetta finished the game that Tuesday. Dr. Scott operated Wednesday morning at 6 a.m. Two hours after the procedure, she checked her patient — and said that horrible phrase: “You need to take a couple weeks off.”
Might as well tell him now to invest in typewriter ribbons. Bavetta flatly refused. He was scheduled to ref the Nets-Hawks in the Meadowlands that Thursday, April 1.
Dr. Scott met him hours before the Nets’ game. She removed the bandages and gauze and placed a Band-Aid on Bavetta’s schnozz. From there, all the refs, the Nets scorer’s crew and team captains wore Band-Aids.
Bavetta laughs at the incident now — though he hardly was laughing when he took the punch. Bavetta hung on to Rose and didn’t hit the floor. For years, he reminded Rose and Ewing of the incident.
“Jalen Rose said, ‘That was some punch,’ and I said, ‘Yeah, but I didn’t go down,’ ” Bavetta said. “Then when I saw Patrick I’d say, ‘Don’t argue with me. I took a punch for you.’ ”
Obviously, Rose was ejected. And ejections play a large part in the first game Bavetta discusses when asked for his top memories: a game at Boston Garden, Nov. 9, 1984. It was early in the season, and both the Celtics and Sixers were unbeaten.
“In the ’80s, the matchup was always Boston-Philly and it was Larry Bird-Julius Erving,” Bavetta said. “I’m excited.”
Boston’s Dennis Johnson dove for a loose ball and crashed into ref Jack Madden, breaking his leg. At a time when only two refs worked a game, Bavetta decided to work alone. He called coaches Billy Cunningham and K.C. Jones together. Both promised to cooperate, be on good behavior and cut Bavetta some slack.
“Well, five technicals and three ejections later …” Bavetta said, laughing.
Bird and Erving fought and got tossed. Bavetta bounced Cunningham on what he thought was a second technical foul — but the first was rescinded and Cunningham returned from the locker room.
“The next day in the papers Cunningham said going off the court, ‘I had beer poured on me and all the embarrassment. Bad enough I endure that once, but Dick Bavetta brings me back out I have to have beer and insults a second time. That was too much,’ ” Bavetta said.
But Cunningham said something else, something that made the game special for Bavetta, the son and grandson of New York City policemen (his dad was also a concert violinist and his grandfather was a professor at Brooklyn Academy of Music).
“He said for an official like Dick Bavetta to eject two superstars, that’s the courage we need in an official,” Bavetta said proudly.
If it takes courage to be willing to admit mistakes, then Bavetta is Richard the Lionhearted. He officiated by one credo which made him embrace replay rules.
Get it right.
“Over the years, for the most part you can approach someone and just be honest with them because it builds up credibility,” Bavetta said.
“Some players, like Larry Bird, he was not interested,” Bavetta said. “I would apologize with, ‘Larry, I want to apologize. I missed that call.’ He goes, ‘It’s still a missed call.’ ”
There were other bumps. There was the Tim Donaghy mess with allegations of betting and point-spread tampering.
“It was a disappointment on behalf of all sports,” Bavetta said. “Speaking for myself, we never thought anything like that would be possible. The NBA has been my family for 39 years. And I’m part of their family like they’re part of my family … so when somebody we love and care about is affected in a negative way, it’s just disappointing.”
But Bavetta, who runs eight miles daily, has so much more to say. Someday, it will be used for his Hall of Fame induction. But this October, he may be speechless. For the first time in nearly half a century, he will not officiate basketball games.
“I started refereeing in New York City in 1966, CYO games for $5,” Bavetta said. “I finally made the NBA in 1975. … That’s 48 years, so come October, it will be the first time in 49 years I won’t be out reffing a basketball game somewhere. It’s going to be interesting. I’ll probably be calling someone at the local YMCA and thinking, ‘Can I do a Biddy game for nothing?’ ”