As a guy whose state boasts "The Greatest Snow on Earth," I have to ask: What is so wrong with the slipperly slope?
A free throw is a completely routine situation. We've all experienced hundreds of them. It is probably the most controlled environment in the entire game and nothing out of the ordinary ever happens. And if it does, it shows up on the forum. To ask for a TO if the FT is made is not even an interesting twist.
And because the rules are ambiguous on whether other referees should be allowed to handle this completely uninteresting time out his way (and it is about the other guy, we're all convinced that we've got it right
), a holy war breaks out.
Good. Things were getting really dull lately.
Then comes my favorite part. The logical fallacies begin arriving by the truckload. Armies of straw men are assembled. Gnarly, otherworldly scenarios are extracted from dark and smelly, Sans-A-Belt covered places. Rediculous comparisons are drawn. Apples are "what-if'ed" against oranges, then grapefruits and finally orangutans. And amidst the choas, there is always the voice, always the voice. The voice that cries out, where do we draw the line? We must have a line.
As an educated, modern man I can only shake my head in utter disbelief and ask: "Why didn't my college professors ever tell me that logical fallacies were so much fun?" Damn! I want my tuition money back.
Why must there be a line? Why must we be able to say we will grant the TO in these situations, but not in any others? Most of all, why must we be able to say why?
Is it not enough to simply agree that in completely routine situations a TO request of the type being discussed can be handled in a completely unsurprising manner? Must we become an irritant for the sake of becoming an irritant? Or worse, must we become an irritant because we don't have a rule to draw a line for us?
If the "ask during halftime for a timeout at the first dead ball under 1 minute" scenario is universally recognized as being way over the line, even if we don't know exactly where to draw the line, then certainly we can agree that the "asking for a TO if the free throw is made" scenario is on the okay side of the line. Even if we don't know exactly where to draw the line.
Must we have just one way of handling a timeout request? Are we not intelligent, resourceful and flexible enough that we can handle a routine request in an unsurprising manner, while dealing with more interesting scenarios differently? So why all the hand-wringing about the 1-in-1,000 or 1-in-1,000,000 scenarios? Aren't we good enough to handle the unusual situation when it arises?