admin
Traditionally male roles are slowly being taken up by women and they are carrying out their tasks as well as their male counterparts. This is so with Danielle Scott and Angelica Suffren, two African-American basketball referees.
The duo, on July 3rd, 2018, made NBA history by being the first women to jointly referee an NBA game together in the league’s 72-year history. This was confirmed by Mike Bass, the NBA spokesperson during an interview with the The Huffington Post. Scott and Suffren officiated an NBA Summer League game between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Miami Heat.
This historic event comes 21 years after Violet Palmer became the first woman to referee an NBA game, breaking the league’s gender barrier. Palmer never looked back from there, becoming the first woman to officiate an NBA playoff game when she did so in the April 25, 2006 match between the Indiana Pacers and New Jersey Nets. She retired in 2016.
On July 4th, Marc Spears, senior writer for ESPN’s The Undefeated, tweeted about the history-making duo: “First time I’ve ever seen two Black women referee an NBA game of any kind. Violet Palmer would be proud Danielle Scott and Angelica Suffren reffing at the California Classic Summer League Lakers versus Heat.”
