Veteran NBA referee Eric Lewis has retired, the league announced today in a brief press release (Twitter link). Lewis officiated more than 1,000 regular season NBA games over the course of his career and has worked several NBA Finals contests since 2019.
Back in May, the NBA opened an investigation into a possible Twitter burner account run by Lewis. The Twitter account, which has since been deleted, responded to many posts about NBA officiating to defend Lewis and other referees. League rules prohibit referees from publicly commenting on the officiating without authorization.
According to today’s announcement, since Lewis has decided to retire, the NBA has closed its investigation into his social media activity.
Here are a few more odds and ends from around the basketball world:
- Having previously announced the prospects that are joining the program for the 2023/24 season, the G League Ignite issued a press release revealing the veteran players who will serve as mentors. John Jenkins and Eric Mika will be returning to the team and will be joined by former NBA guards Jeremy Pargo and David Stockton, as well as guard Admon Gilder, who has played in a handful of international leagues since going undrafted out of Gonzaga in 2020.
- Eric Pincus of Bleacher Report ranked all 30 NBA teams based on their future draft assets, from the Thunder (No. 1) and Spurs (No. 2) to the Timberwolves (No. 29) and Suns (No. 30).
- Mike Vorkunov of The Athletic takes a look at where things stand with the NBA and the Bally Sports regional sports networks after parent company Diamond Sports Group filed for bankruptcy. The league has been informed, according to Vorkunov, that Diamond Sports Group has the capital to honor its NBA commitments for the upcoming season, though one industry source told The Athletic that it’s a “very fluid situation.”
Convenient. The NBA should have continued their investigation and tried to see if other refs were up to nonsense. It’s what they would have done if a player had done something wrong and abruptly retired.
Isn’t Lewis also the one who overreacted to a Heat win or something, which made people think he’d put a bet on the game? I remember the meme, but not the context.
My speculation (nothing more, nothing less): The league certainly doesn’t want another bad-publicity incident concerning their referees… They found solid evidence that Lewis broke the rules and said to him, “We can make this easy or difficult…”
Psychologically speaking, if that’s what they found, this is the wrong choice. People will instantly associate it with corruption or backroom dealing, which is more damaging to their reputation than finding one referee who is a problem and dismissing him. The latter would show that it’s not to be tolerated and that the NBA would end the speculation of there being more than just one guy who broke the rules. Tim Donaghee (or however you spell it) was an outlier. I don’t think Lewis would go on a tell-all and try to drag everyone else down with him.
So what did the NBA find to force him to retire?