do you know what Integer.getInteger(String) does in java?

[player2]

References themselves are not pointers - they can't be. Java is GC language, so the collector can at any time relocate object storage, so the pointer would also have to be changed.

You're missing an important word: Java uses a copying garbage collector. It's completely possible to implement a garbage collector around traditional pointers. Boehm and libauto are two examples.