|
This is an interesting topic, and I'll try to respond to it both in my coach shoes, and my official's shoes. As a coach, I feel it is one of my biggest in game responsiblities to be an advocate for my players and to be a leader during the game. In order to have any success, you have to build a trust with your team. When it comes to dealing with calls by officials, I teach my kids that I will be the only one who discusses calls with officials. However, in order for this philosophy to work, there will be times as a coach when you have to stand up for your players, particularly in the situation you describe, with a lot of kids from the inner-city. If you don't stand up for them, they'll view you as a patsy and they'll start to react themselves. On the other end, if you do this too often, as a number of coaches do, you lose credibility not only with the officials, but with your players as you've now given them the excuse to fail. My goal is for my players to feel, that "coach has my back," but when they happen to be wrong, that they recognize that, "coach would have my back if I'm right, so I must be wrong."
As an official, I'm not a part of any team that's playing, nor am I in tune with a team's inner workings. I call what I see, try to call the obvious and do my best. If the situation happened the way you described it, I, as a coach, I sympatize. As an official, who might have, and probably did, see the play differently, I would not have taken kindly to your comments, and given the situation and the context, may or may not have issued a technical foul.
I'm not sure exactly what your question is here on the forum. If you're looking for a way to show up an official for the benefit of maintaining credibility in the eyes of your players and not get penalized, I say there is none. If you want us as officials to condone rationalizations for certain behavior, we won't. This is a cost-benefit decision that you have to make, and accept the consequences for: if you get a technical or even ejected for what you say/do, that's part of the decision that you made. Your primary role is as a role model for the kids that you coach, and if you feel that the only way to maintain that role in a specific situation that you have to show-up the officials, then by all means do so, but expect to be penalized accordingly, and don't come here or anywhere else and expect sympathy by rationalizing that, "the officials were so bad they made me do it."
If you're looking for a better way to handle the situation, probably rather than showing up the official by shouting across the floor at his partner, call a timeout and use the timeout to question the call/get an answer, that way, at least you're not shouting across the court and you're still defending your players.
|