Ryan Hanley

And there's going to be a lot of you staring at the screen that are going to say a lot of negative things at refs.

And I get it.

When my kid has a foul called on him that I don't like... When Tony Green, who's from Atlanta...

Uh, so I had, um, I don't know if you remember, um, uh, John Calhoun, Johnny Cal or Jimmy.

So those guys are from Albany.

Those are the guys that taught me how to ref.

So they are, they were here.

They were in the second half of their career when I first started.

Cause I started when I was 20 as well.

And, um,

you know, it's funny, you put yourself in that space.

And like a lot of people would ask them about their interpretation of plays and calls.

And, and I would just sit near them.

And I oftentimes I didn't even really ask them any questions I wanted to hear.

I wanted to hear one, how they responded to those questions.

And two, what I was always the most interested in, and really in life, this is a big part of where I try to sit is, you

To me, the most impressive people are those who can find clarity and calm in moments of chaos.

And it shows your ability to be present, to be focused, your preparation, to be confident.

calm and clear in a moment of chaos isn't like you're just able to do it it shows that you have executed a certain number of skills and put a certain amount of thought in before that moment to be there because if you decide i'm just gonna flip the switch on right now you're screwed it doesn't work that way right it's it's preparation it's thought it's the pre-game right so so

You know, a lot of people who've never reffed a basketball game probably don't realize this, but similar to having a pregame call for a sales call or prepping for a talk, etc., referees will have an hour to sometimes three-hour long meeting, depending on the game and how much time you have, where you're literally visualizing every move through the court, every play.