Blaming officials too easy, referees’ negotiator says

? Whether Jeff Van Gundy is retained as Houston’s coach is up to the Rockets, but the league needs to do a better job of defending its game officials from criticism by coaches, the spokesman for the National Basketball Referees Assn. said Tuesday.

Lamell McMorris, the lead negotiator for the NBRA, said the NBA’s response to Van Gundy’s comments about league officials targeting Rockets center Yao Ming was unacceptable. However, McMorris did not call for Van Gundy’s job, as he did in a statement Monday night.

“Van Gundy is really not the issue here, per se,” McMorris said Tuesday in a phone interview with the Associated Press. “Van Gundy and whether or not he’ll be retained is up to the Houston Rockets.

“The real issue is the culture that I feel has been created where referees are the easy scapegoat. Where it is easy to allege, easy to accuse and easy to attack the referees. Even easy and acceptable to question the integrity of the referees publicly.”

The league fined Van Gundy $100,000 — the largest assessed against a coach — after the coach said an official who was not working the playoffs told him Yao was being targeted following complaints by Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks.

On Monday, Van Gundy clarified his comments, saying when he referred to an NBA official, he was not talking about a game official and was intentionally vague when people inferred he meant a referee.

The NBA said it was satisfied with Van Gundy’s explanation and he would not be disciplined further.