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Last night, at our association meeting, the following situation was discussed.
Player A1 commits two fouls during the first period and gets a seat on the bench for the rest of the quarter. As the teams enter the floor to begin the second quarter, the officials count the number of players coming on to the floor. The counts are five for Team A and five for Team B, so the Referee gives the ball to Team B to start the quarter. Team B completes the throw in and, while Player B1 is dribbling on the wing (not really under pressure, not really doing anything to advance the ball), Referee notices that A1 walks off the court and sits down in front of the table. Referee blows his whistle and goes to the table.
Referee gets to the sideline and asks A1, "Why did you leave the floor?" A1 says: "Someone at the table said to come over because I wasn't legally in the game." Referee asks the official scorer, the official timer, and the person keeping the visiting book and each of them says to the Referee that they did not say a thing.
Referee consults quickly with his partner (two-man crew) before assessing a technical foul against A1 for leaving the floor for an unauthorized reason.
Referee (who last year officiated in the state final game and has more than 30 years of experience) and his partner (who also has about 30 years of experience and is well respected in the area) were both at the association meeting and announced that, while they had done the correct thing by the book, they feel that they did not handle it right with respect to common sense. They both said that they feel as though they should have just waived Player A1 back on to the court, given the ball back to Team B, and continued with the game. Another official at the meeting asks whether they might instead have called a violation against A1 given the rule change.
The experienced group of officials at the meeting say, essentially: "No, the rule change was for players going out of bounds around screens, but leaving the court for an unauthorized reason is still a T." A lot of us at the meeting point to the rule, but experienced officials insist that these are "two entirely different circumstances." While I agree that they are different circumstances, I am aware of only one penalty authorized by the rule book for leaving the court for an unauthorized reason.
I am looking for two opinions: (1) If you called it, by the book, what would the call be? and (2) Given that Team B had the ball (and thus Player A1 was not leaving to gain an advantage), would the best call have been a "no call."
Thanks for your thoughts.
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