[ryan330i]

This is a fascinating forum. I found this site today looking online for rules for the basketball driveway game of 21, because the group of guys I play with all come from different regions and we all knew different rules! I am neither coach or referee, but was a basketball player up to freshman junior-varsity level.

Anyway, getting to the point here, I definitely feel like that player’s lack of response was acceptable and did not rob the referee of any respect he deserves.

As was pointed out, the relationship between player and referee at that level is not like a parent and child, superior officer and subordinate, or even coach and player. The relationship and respect given and taken between player and referee, to me, is MUCH closer to that of opposing players: Professional respect within the bounds of the rules of the game, but nothing more, especially if the player is loosing horribly. And with my perspective comes the corollary: The referee should equally respect the players, which I don’t feel was completely done here.

I feel like in this particular situation if the referee was trying to help the player, the respectful and helpful thing for the referee to do would be to have explained his call, “I issued the delay of game warning for you crossing the inbound line” and leave it at that.

When you speak to him as a command “Make sure you don’t come across this line” and then follow that with a patronizing, “understand?”, and then the final “Do you understand?”, to me instantly tells the player a few things: 1)You don’t respect him and in fact, 2) you expect his deference to you as something more like an parent/coach/superior officer and perhaps even 3) you are angry you aren’t getting it.

Overall, I think there are a dozen nuanced ways a player could respond “yes, I understand” and probably only one of those would have NOT resulted in a technical, given his state of mind.

I agree with the coach who recommended his players not engage with the referee in tense situations like that.

As a coach, if my player did respond rudely and was T'd, I'd not only get on him, but let the referee have it for what would appear to me as baiting him into a response.