Steve Javie

Early life Steve Javie was born on January 17, 1955, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, As a prospect in baseball, Javie signed with the Baltimore Orioles minor league organization. Javie resides in Blue Bell, Pennsylvania. ==Baseball umpire==

After his baseball playing career was over at age 22, Javie began working at Johnson & Johnson in their baby products line. Becoming uninterested in his job at Johnson & Johnson, he decided to pursue an occupation within sports, and became a baseball umpire in 1978. Having no prior experience as an arbiter, Javie attended an umpire school operated by Major League Baseball (MLB) umpire Bill Kinnamon. Upon completion of training, he was selected to work in the Florida State League. Looking to be promoted to the Class-AA Eastern League, he was denied entrance into the league due to scheduling conflicts and later a players' strike. In June 1981, after two and a half years in the Florida State League, Javie left the organization over disagreements with executives due to the lack of promotion opportunities, and being forced to split from an experienced umpire crew that included Jerry Layne, who later worked in the major leagues. ==Basketball referee==

CBA career While serving as an umpire, Javie had officiated basketball games at the high school level in Pennsylvania during the baseball off-season. and Jack Madden In the sequence of events that followed, Javie ejected Ellison after protesting the call, During the 2002–03 NBA season, Javie was fined $1,000 by the league for a verbal altercation with Pat Riley, then-head coach of the Miami Heat. In April 2003, Javie was the referee in Michael Jordan's final game of his fifteen-year NBA career. During a game break towards the end of regulation, Javie congratulated Jordan on his career and told him he was a "class act". Other referees were sentenced to probation or a period of house arrest, and ordered to pay the taxes. On June 22, 2017, Javie was one of four new inductees into the National Polish-American Sports Hall of Fame in Troy, Michigan. He was the recipient of Sports Faith International's Father Smyth Award on May 22, 2021. He is a permanent deacon in the Catholic Church. Media career In June 2012, it was announced that Javie would join NBA on ESPN, serving as a rules analyst working marquee games during the season and throughout the NBA Playoffs. Javie also appears on ESPN programming to discuss controversial referee occurrences. ==References==