‘I was elated’: How Naperville’s Crawford earned the call to be in the Naismith Hall of Fame

Danny Crawford got the call on April 1 and could not quite believe it.

The retired National Basketball Association referee, a Naperville resident, was among the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame’s Class of 2025.

“I was elated. Shocked and elated,” he said.

He had no idea he’d even been nominated.

“The first question I asked myself is, how did I get on the list?” Crawford said.

The nomination started courtesy of his daughter, Lia, a Naperville Central graduate who got the ball rolling. Danny and Claudia Crawford’s son, Drew, starred in basketball at Naperville Central then at Northwestern University, and now plays professionally in Israel.

In fact, Danny Crawford initially missed Naismith Hall of Fame board chair Jerry Colangelo’s congratulatory call because he and Claudia were returning from Israel after meeting their first grandchild, 3-month-old Jayden, for the first time.

At first Danny Crawford didn’t think he deserved to be in the hall of fame. Lia did, though, and eventually her father reconsidered. He’ll be enshrined Sept. 6 in Springfield, Massachusetts.

“In reality when you look over my career, I’ve worked some memorable games and I did it the right way,” he said. “I stayed out of the way of the game, I was a well-respected referee, and me being inducted is, I think, a testament to that.”

Absolutely. In a 32-year NBA career Crawford called 23 straight NBA Finals culminating with the Golden State Warriors’ 4-1 decision over the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2017, his last season.

He worked more than 2,000 regular-season games and 300 playoff games, called All-Star Games, and refereed Game 7 in the NBA Finals in 2010, 2013 and 2016, a rarity considering a Game 7 has occurred in the finals only 19 times since 1947.

Crawford, 71, obviously ran downcourt alongside some of the game’s greatest players. Of Michael Jordan, Crawford said:

“He was just a fierce competitor, and he would come after players and he would come after referees. And it was my job to get the utmost respect, because as a referee I always gave players respect and I actually expected that back.”

Crawford could give as good as he got. From Chicago’s West Side, he played basketball at Cregier High School and then at Northeastern Illinois University, an intense player who earned his share of technical fouls.

His appetite for calling games began by refereeing Northeastern intramural basketball while still in college. He was salty.

“People would yell at me and I yelled back at them,” Crawford said.

In an alumni game he even drew a technical foul called by his brother, Eugene, a former Big Ten Conference official who is in the Illinois Basketball Coaches Association Hall of Fame.

These experiences helped Crawford as he rose through the ranks of officiating in the Chicago Public League, National Junior College, Missouri Valley Conference and finally in 1985, the NBA.

“I learned as a referee how to be patient with players, because when played I didn’t get that much patience from referees,” he said. “I know once I became a referee you have to give players an ear. That’s all they want, they just want to be heard.”

That included the most problematic star he shared a court with, Rasheed Wallace (“He just defied authority”) and the more easygoing Ray Allen, Tim Duncan, Grant Hill and David Robinson (“All class acts”).

Settling in Naperville with his family in 1993, in retirement Crawford “dabbles” in the stock market and in another treacherous game, golf.

As he showed for 32 years alongside what he called “the world’s greatest athletes,” Crawford has the constitution for such intense pursuits.

“My job was to make sure they played within the rules, so for me, I felt like I was hooping with them. They just never passed me the ball. But my engagement in the game was just as intense as their engagement in the game was, but we just had different job titles,” Crawford said.

“If you ask me — I know Michael Jordan would disagree — I think I had the greatest job in the world.”

doberhelman@dailyherald.com