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I'm a baseball umpire from late March until they stop calling me in October. Baseball is a game dominated by obscure rules and interpretations. Fortunately, basketball is not quite like that -- we usually don't have to think too much about rules, in my opinion. Well, most of the time.
Last night I was working a girls varisty game. Evenly matched teams, very sloppy play. Partner and I are regular partners and we work well together. We communicate well on the floor and we don't hesitate to talk toeach other when needed.
PLAY #1: Held ball inside the lane, arrow to the home team -- ball under their frontcourt basket with 11 seconds left in the first half. Home team takes a 30-second timeout to set up a play. I'm inbounding the ball. After handing the ball to the A player, I called an immediate foul on an A player for throwing an elbow to get open under the basket. We go down to the other end and shoot the 1-and-1 and the half ends shortly after.
As I met my partner at halfcourt, I saw that the arrow was pointed to the visiting team and I immediately knew this was in error. I pulled my partner aside and explained to him that the arrow should NOT have been changed on that foul we had. He disagreed with me and rather than continuing this conversation at that point, we went into our locker room.
I was the R and could've simply changed it, but I wanted this to be a crew decision. Besides, we'd have to talk to the coaches if we changed the arrow, and they were gone by this point.
I found the relevant rule in the book in about 30 seconds and passed the book to my partner. To his credit, he immediately agreed that we needed to fix the arrow.
We went back to the court early and I explained the situation to the visiting coach who immediately agreed with my explanation. My partner talked to the table and I talked to the home coach, who didn't even remember the held ball/timeout/foul scenario from the first half -- she was just happy to be getting the ball back.
I don't know if there's rule support to change the possession arrow, but since we didn't have another AP throw-in, I really don't see this as an "error," rather us properly setting the arrow when it was improperly set by the table crew.
PLAY #2: My partner got even with me in the second half. Home team's FT shooters shot with such a high arc that we had a number of air ball violations during the game. Player shoots and from the T (2-whistle) it was pretty clear to me that the shot didn't catch rim. I blew the whistle and my partner came out and said that the shot brushed the front of the rim (he mentioned later that he was watching the rebounding action under the rim and he saw the brush out of the corner of his eye).
I went to the table and told them that we were treating it as an inadvertant whistle and going to the arrow as there was no possession when I incorrectly blew it dead. I had to explain this to the visiting coach as well -- and to his credit he smiled and told me that I had pretty good eyesight to see that happen and I explained that my partner had seen it from the L and the coach told me he was happy we cared enough to get it right.
At halftime my partner told me he had never had a foul during an AP throwin in the 20 years since he's been an official. I had never had my situation happen in the 18 years since I worked my first HS game. I think we handled both situations properly, but I'm prepared to take my lumps from the board if you think we didn't. I will say the coaches were pleased with our explanation of both of these situations.
--Rich
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