The NBA has revealed that South Korean native Intae Hwang will be a full-time staff referee for this season, and his journey to get to this point is an incredible one.
“The NBA has announced that Intae Hwang, who moved his young family 7,000 miles from South Korea to New Jersey to pursue his officiating career, has been named a full-time staff referee for the 2023-24 season.”
The NBA has announced that Intae Hwang, who moved his young family 7,000 miles from South Korea to New Jersey to pursue his officiating career, has been named a full-time staff referee for the 2023-24 season. https://t.co/Er8SG4pzCy
— Ben Golliver (@BenGolliver) October 10, 2023
It was a huge gamble to relocate his family, but Hwang has now become the first-ever full-time NBA staff referee from outside North America. Prior to this, he had worked as an official in the G League for two seasons and for one season in the WNBA.
In the 2022-23 NBA campaign, he refereed seven regular season games as a non-staff official as well. He will continue to get G League assignments even with this promotion, as all referees with less than four years of experience working NBA games are required to do so.
Who Is Intae Hwang?
To say it was a long shot for Hwang to make it here would be an understatement. Born to Jungik Hwang, a small businessman, and Jaeryeun Jung in around 1980, Intae only really developed an interest in basketball in middle school in Masan, South Korea, as per Golliver. He still didn’t particularly have any interest in being a referee, however.
It was only after a chance encounter with Kirok Shin, his senior at Busan University of Foreign Studies, that things changed for Hwang. Shin was a local referee and inspired Hwang to follow that path in 2004.
It would lead him to become a referee in the Korean Basketball League, and his good work didn’t go unnoticed. FIBA named him among the group of referees for the 2016 Rio Olympics and the 2019 FIBA World Cup in China.
It was at the Olympics that Hwang caught the eye of the NBA. Just like how scouts travel around the world to spot the best foreign talents, the league does it to identify potential referees as well. Hwang was invited by the NBA for the 2017 Summer League, and that’s when his journey toward becoming a full-time staff referee began.
The league followed his career after that, and Hwang would receive an invitation to join the NBA’s Referee Development Program. It was a big risk to relocate his entire family to the U.S., especially as he was not being offered a full-time job, but Hwang did it in January 2020.
Not long after, though, the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, and everything went haywire. No one could have predicted what was coming, but Hwang saw the shutdown as an opportunity, not as a disaster for him. He spent his time studying the G League and NBA games and working on his English.
Hwang then aced the three-year program in 18 months to get a role in the G League. There is clearly a lot to like about Hwang’s journey, and certain statements from the man himself make me believe that he can be one of the best officials in the NBA.
“I’m not a star player,” he told Golliver. “I’m not the main actor. I’m not that special. After watching a game, I hope the spectators talk about the plays, the dunks and the three-pointers. My goal is that they don’t mention the referee. I feel good when we finish a game without any yelling.”
That is exactly the mindset an official needs to have. We have seen way too many instances where it seemed like the referee tried to make himself the main actor and the biggest talking point.
Hwang doesn’t seem to be that type, and the NBA could use a lot more officials who think like him. He is inevitably going to make some mistakes himself, though, but you probably shouldn’t yell at him too much during the games, as he is a third-degree black belt in taekwondo. Jokes aside, I really look forward to seeing how well he does perform.
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