Quote:
Originally posted by thadrus
"I won't give a warning unless it effects the play. "
A part of me has a real problem with this statement. Along with the "advantage/disadvantage" statements. I really do understand the reasoning and I do call by advantage or disadvantage (though I'm somewhat ashamed to admit it). I read very recently in one of the threads that if a point guard is bringing the ball down court, unguarded, and travels or double dribbles, they haven't gained an advantage, but we'll all call it. If the rule is broken, why don't we call it. It seems that every year our state association tells the officials to emphasize things like palming and intentional fouls and every year the veteren refs say "I'm not gonna call it unless they are using it to take advantage" so naturally the new refs have to call it the same way or they'll never move up. Meanwhile, we keep chipping away at the rule book.
More specifically, your statement concerns me because....What if team A violated in the first quarter and you didn't report the warning. It is now tied with 2 sec in the game and team A violates again. Since you didn't call it earlier it is just a warning instead of a technical and we're quite possibly going to overtime instead of team B (again possibly) winning outright.
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This is a great post (I mean the quote, not necessarily what I'm typing here). I agree with virtually everything you say. How can a ref assume a defender doesn't "gain an advantage" when breaking the plane sometimes, and sometimes he does? Even if you think he "doesn't", it could be that his hand position prevented the inbounder from deciding to attempt to throw the ball that way, because now the angle of flight is cut way down.
I do need to comment, however, on your example of the consequences of not calling the warning early and therefore having it effect a call in the last seconds. You are right on in stating this affects the game. The case book says that if the clock is running, you ignore a boundary violation like this one since it would give a trailing defensive team an unfair advantage, i.e.: committing a violation and being rewarded by having the clock stop. But if you had properly called the warning earlier, this second violation would be a T and their "advantage" would be nullified, even though the clock would stop. So you see, not calling the warning earlier could have an even bigger influence on the game than you first imagined.
Not calling it is just another example of refs thinking that by not enforcing the rules and/or not calling the game consistently from start to finish (for instance, requiring "blood" for a foul late in the game) that they are letting the players decide the outcome when in fact, it's just the other way around.