Monty McCutchen still remembers his first accuser. Not by name, but by time and place. Long before he summited sport’s most thankless profession, back in 1980s small-town Texas, he was a novice ref in a stuffy high school gym surrounded by freshman boys and fuming dads. “I didn't know what I was doing,” he admits, other than making some much-needed cash. But he saw a foul, so he blew his whistle and raised his arm, and that’s when he heard it.
“C’mon!” a parent hollered. “No makeup calls!”
Like every ref, McCutchen heard those two profane words plenty more over the years, “from the very beginnings” of his career all the way to nine NBA Finals.