Oh JR, I am beginning to think that you disagree with anything that I write just on principle.
I am not making up my own interpretation; I am simply reading the plain language of the rule. I was pointing out that Hartsy is the one who is putting his own criterion into the rule. He is the one who wrote that the five players had to be "inside the boundary lines when play began." I merely pointed out to him that there is no such requirement. In fact, as you acknowledged 10.1.9 says, "While it is true the entire team may be off the court while the procedure is being used," so just the opposite of what Hartsy wrote is true.
I also never advocated allowing a team to play with 4 for a significant amount of time. What I wrote was, "So if 4 players are inbounds when you make the ball live, and the fifth follows immediately thereafter, the rules allow this."
You really went out of your way to twist this simple statement. It is true and I'll stand behind it.
But I'll go ahead and clarify the example I gave just for you: 4 players happen to be inbounds right next to the bench when the official administers the throw-in, the fifth player who was standing OOB at that time follows the rest of his team onto the court IMMEDIATELY. He is perhaps only one step behind them.
This example was crafted to highlight the fact that the OOB boundary has nothing to do with the rule and Hartsy should not use that line as indicative of a T.
Of course, I do agree that if this fifth player delays before following the rest of his teammates, it is a technical foul. However, it is still not an "illegal sub T" as Hartsy wrote, but a team technical foul for breaking 10-1-9.
Now we get to the crux of the matter. How long of a delay is necessary before a T should be called.
I don't contest your belief that "all players" means all five; that seems straightforward. However, I will take issue with your ""approximately" means now!" statement. We both know that it doesn't. I'd provide a dictionary definition here, but Dan would call that pedantic.
Later you wrote, "Of course, whether you wanna call this play strictly if one player does happen to come back on just a l'il bit later than his teammates is a whole 'nother matter, imo." I consider this to be a much more reasonable thought.
I thought of a good way to make a decision on this.
Noting that these same time-qualifying words also appear in the double foul rule 4-19-7, I would advocate that an official judge "at approximately the same time" for a team reentering the court the same way he would understand those words for a double foul.
In other words, if the time lag is close enough that an official would consider two fouls happening over that time span to constiture a double foul, then one should consider the team's reentry legal. If the fouls would have to be separate, then so is the reentry; thus warranting the T.
Based on your answers to some other posts, you seem to be quite a proponent of calling double fouls or double technical fouls in many situations when the players mix it up with each other, so I'll guess that you have a good feel for judging this time frame and might even like the idea of applying it to the reentry requirement.