When it comes to basketball games, there is always one guarantee that you will see during the game: complaints of the officials. Whether it is from the players, coaches, or even the fans, basketball officials seem to have the most scrutinized job in sports, and their environment is different from any other worker.

In most traditional workplaces, the employer is an expert in his field and tries to please the customer by providing them a service or item of their wanting. Most of the time, the customer is happy or satisfied with what they are receiving. If they do have complaints, however, they have certain people in the company that deal with these types of dissatisfactions.

For basketball officials, they do not work in a traditional workplace.

In their setting, they are forced to use their knowledge of basketball rules to properly regulate games they are officiating. Unlike the traditional workplace, they are received with dissatisfaction with nearly every call they make. And they do not just receive opposition from the athletes playing the game, but also from the coaches and fans.

“You’re gonna get crap from people [for officiating], whether you were good or bad, because that’s just the way basketball is,” Austin Carr, a clinician for the intramural sports league at Ohio University and also a certified OHSAA, said. 

Speed plays a major factor into the difficulty of officiating of the sport. Unlike most major sports, like baseball and football, where there is a lot of downtime in between a play, basketball is a constant up and down pace, with few seconds of stoppage in between each whistle.

“Obviously in football, you stop every play. But in basketball, you keep going up and down the court, especially during fast breaks,” Nate Shreve said. “You don’t have the time to make a call as you do in any other sport, but in basketball you have a certain window to make a call.”

According to two different Wall Street Journals, one published in 2010 and the other in 2013, there is actually an average of 11 minutes of action in baseball and 18 minutes in football. In basketball, the clock only stops when the ball a whistle is blown and the play is dead.

Coaches and fans will get on officials about the calls they make, but some will dive deeper than that. Some fans will question the official’s calls because of their age.

Shreve, a 19-year-old certified OHSAA official, has been a basketball official for three years and says fans will assume his age means he has no knowledge of how to officiate.

“I’ve heard ‘you’re too young’ and ‘you don’t know what you’re doing’ from fans and coaches, but we obviously do know how, considering we have to take a test [on their knowledge of the rules and regulations of basketball] in order to become an official.”

Gender also plays a major role in the coach’s harassment of officials.

Austin Carr, a clinician for the intramural sports league at Ohio University and also a certified OHSAA, has heard complaints from coaches when he has worked with female officials.

“I’ve had a coach come up to me and say ‘how can you work with these two females?’ I was blown away, because there is no reason that a girl can’t officiate basketball better than any guy.”

Connecting to the fans is one of the difficult aspects of officiating. Sports television networks are trying to bridge the gap, having hired former officials in order to analyze questionable calls made during games, as well as give reason as to why or why not a call was made. 

In 2012, two years after Fox Sports brought in former National Football League vice president of officiating Mike Pereira, ESPN hired former National Basketball Association referee Steve Javie as an analyst.

“I think (Mike Pereira) has really gained credibility for officials in the NFL, but fans of the NBA have never heard from or been given the perspective from the officials' point of view,” Javie said in an interview with SI.com in 2012. “I'm hoping for positive feedback because I believe it's something that's been missing. I hope people come away and say, "Boy, I didn't even look at it that way, and I never knew that.”

Despite everything that the officials have to deal with, it is their job to maintain their composure, even when they want to retaliate.

“As an official, when I am receiving a complaint from a player, I listen to what they have to say and make it easier for them to understand, and let them know why or why not I made a call,” said Alex Gebers, the Student Director of Officials for inter mural sports at Ohio University.

Complaints will always be a part of the game, due to the intensity of the players and coaches. But remember, it may look obvious from the stands, but when you put yourself in their shoes, it is a lot harder than it may seem.