Loud and colorful, demonstrative and in-your-face. An almost instantly recognizable NBA figure.
Words such as those are used today to describe the world's best known basketball players, the young millionaires of the flashiest team sport around. But in years past, in a different generation, they applied to one of the guys with a whistle and gray shirt.He was Earl Strom, an NBA referee for 29 years, and he died Sunday at his home near Reading, Pa., after a long illness. He was 66.
Strom retired after working the 1990 NBA Finals, and in recent years worked as a guest columnist, author and color commentator on NBA broadcasts before undergoing surgery in January for a malignant brain tumor.
Strom, respected as much for his fairness as his outspokenness, learned his trade with the famous refs of the NBA's formative years - Mendy Rudolph, Norm Drucker and Sid Borgia.
When he did retire, he characteristically didn't go quietly.
"I feel I'm the last of a dying breed," he said at a news conference in Portland, Ore., somewhat bitter that the league had asked him to tone down his showmanship.
Strom once broke his thumb while punching a fan, then worked the deciding game of the Eastern Conference final a couple of days later with his hand in a cast.
He once leaped over a table to attack a critical team official, and a fan once threatened to blow his head off with a shotgun if he showed up to work Julius Erving's final game. He worked it anyway.
He even acknowledged an unspoken fact that any fan of the pro game already knows - refs don't always call everything.
"I like to let them play," he said. "I like to let the players decide the outcome of a game."