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I have a sorta similar situation (although I was the other official on the floor, instead of the one calling the T's). It was the graduate school championship game. There's a very limited pool of officials that are remotely competent and/or have the desire to work games, so we were working the second game in a row (the first being the undergraduate championship). Anyway. the undergrad game had been a little rough (three or four technicals I think, and the best player from one team fouled out on a disputed charge call with 5 minutes left). Of course the players for the second game saw most of that game, so we were already set up for a rough second game. Before the game, the captain for Team A (for identification purposes) says some things to me to the effect of "try to control your partner" (I have slightly more experience and had the fortune of not having any really unpopular calls in the first game, so I guess he thought I could control the other official). Anyway, about 5 minutes into the game, my partner calls a foul on Team B. It is quickly followed by a technical (for which I didn't see the reason). Then while team A is shooting free throws, my partner ejects the player who had fouled. I was shocked. I had seen no cause for it. Neither did anyone else on the court (I was in the awkward position of having Team A ask if I could overrule him). I went over and talked to my partner, to try to figure out what happened. He said that the player stared at him, then waved his tongue. I was struck by the bizarreness of this. I asked if he wanted to stick with the ejection (I could hardly believe he'd just ejected one of the top players in the first five minutes of the championship game for stuff I hadn't even noticed). He said he wanted to stick with it, so we did. The game didn't not go well. Team B lost by 20 or so. They didn't complain much directly to him, but both teams often asked me if I could change his calls [most of them weren't bad]. They weren't exceptionally unsportsmanlike, but they exhuded the attitude of "you're so incompetent it's not even worth complaining." After the game, their captain (who officiates from time to time) told my partner he was the worst official ever.
Sorry this is so long, but I wanted to paint as complete a picture as possible. After the game, I talked to my partner pretty extensively (he was kinda down from the games). One thing I said was that, while ejections are a tool, they should be respected. I basically said that if nobody in the gym except he and the player can even tell what happened, perhaps a warning could have done the job. If the player keeps trying to intimidate, then follow through with an ejection. I felt that he lost all credibility by ejecting a player at that point. I shared with him that when you eject a player, they need to have done something that can be noticed by more than just you, unless they've been clearly warned. Basically, when you surprise your partner and the other team with an ejection, anything you gain from stopping the one player from unsporting behavior is outweighed by the fact that both teams now have no respect for you or belief in your credibility. I was wondering what people think about this. Must every unsporting act be harshly penalized, or should things that are subtle be warned before they are harshly penalized?
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