This subject came up because of the announcers Dick Enberg and Bill Walton beat it to death in the Arizona-Michigan State.
Neither coach abused the rule--only acted within that allowed i.e. to talk to the players until they "had" to replace the player.
To be technical, legalistic, i.e. strictly by the book, the player must be replaced within 30 seconds. Therefore, if the warning horn goes off and the player has not reported to the table, then a technical foul should be called.
However, if my 26 years I only called one tech, in this case on a coach who was never going to put a player in until I told him so. Since it is not my responsibility to remind him of the rule, he got the 'T'.
But this would be an exception to the rule.
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