I'm a new ref just getting started with reffing organized basketball. I already got my rulebooks from my state association (Illinois), took the Part 1 test and mailed it. I think I nailed the test (it's pretty hard not to since it's open book) so I should be getting my license and patch within a few weeks.
I've been reffing a men's charity league for the past few weeks now. This league didn't have refs their previous seasons (call your own fouls type of thing) so they were happy to have 1 ref volunteer. I called most of the games by myself. Over the course of the season, I've run into a lot of situations brought about by the fact that I don't have much experience yet and of course, the difficulty of calling a game by yourself. These situations could very well be subjects of numerous threads.
Last night we started the playoffs and the league organizers decided to have 2 refs. They called the local assignor to provide us with a licensed ref. They were willing to pay the extra ref and I really didn't mind much that I wasn't being paid and he is since technically, I'm not licensed yet.
Obviously, this other ref was more experienced than me (he claimed to have been reffing for 8 years now). But here is some of the things I noticed about him:
(1) First, he came in late. I started the game by myself (which is usually the case) and he came in at around the 15:00 mark.
(2) We didn't conference so we weren't able to go through mechanics, switching, simultaneous calls, etc.
(3) We weren't switching! He was always on the same side and so I had to cover the other side. So for the entire game, we covered the same endlines, i.e. I was always under Team A's basket for the entire 1st half and under Team B's for the 2nd half. I don't think this is ideal since switching would balance out some of the calls I may have missed in the post.
(4) He wasn't hustling! More often than not, he wasn't under the basket when he was lead.
(5) I noticed that he was allowing a lot of rough play and contact under the basket when he is lead which led to a lot of complaining and swearing from the players. If I had called the game myself, I probably would call it a little tighter just to get the players off my back. But obviously, I had to adjust to what we were allowing for consistency. He told me that he just came from a high school game he worked. Could it be that he was tired and just wanted this game to be over and go home? For those of you who have officiated men's leagues before, do you usually allow the players just to play and just call fouls when absolutely necessary? As he said to me: "These players pay to play not to shoot free throws".
Some of you may be asking why I didn't just take the initiative and raise these points with him last night. Well, as the newbie, I wasn't comfortable raising this discussion with him. I did ask him during the half if we needed to talk about anything since we didn't conference and he said "Not really". Should I have told him that I was a newbie, that I needed this game as a practice and I would prefer it if we followed the correct mechanics?
One more thing: Team A started the game with only 4 players (1 guy did not show up). During their 3rd possession, I called 3-seconds on A (one of their players was camping forever out there). They started getting on me saying "How can you call 3-seconds when we only have 4 players?" Do they have a point or are they just trying to test me or show me up? As far as I know, there is no suspension of any rules when one team has less than 5 players.
Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
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