Willie Brown looked confused when he was asked if being hearing impaired impacted his ability to referee basketball games.
Why would it?
Being deaf hadn’t ever stopped the current World Basketball Association referee from doing anything else.
“It’s the same as when I played basketball,” Brown said Saturday through translator Zeke McDaniel, his old high school coach at Georgia School for the Deaf. “I’m not worried about the crowd or anything.
“I can’t hear when they say bad things about me,” he joked.
Jokes aside, Brown is a licensed referee and was part of the three-man crew at the Rome Gladiators game last Saturday.
He communicates to coaches by writing information down or often he allows the hearing officials to interact with the coaches.
Like his colleagues in the WBA, Brown’s goal is to become an NBA official.
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