[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

Originally posted by mick

trippingants,

I like to allow the players to determine posession within a couple of seconds before I stop play.

Sometimes, if the play appears to be getting ugly (possible injury) and with neither player having solid control, I will call a jump in order to arrest additional action. This is not per rule, but my choice.

Other times, the players could just be trying to get the ball for several seconds with nobody getting control. Bodies all over the place and no whistles. Just a lot of thumbs after a "soapy" ball.

But, there is also the "immediate jump ball" where a defender's hand stops the release of a pass or a shot from the ball handler's. For this play there should be no delay.

mick

I take exception to your first paragraph concerning the play getting ugly. The scenario in your first paragraph is not different that the scenario in your second paragraph. It is my opinion that officials call held balls too soon. It is not an official's job to arrest additional action. If a foul occurs before then call the foul, but do not call a held ball when there is none just to prevent the possibility of a foul.

I guess this leads to one of my pet peeves. Get rid of this abomination called alternating possession. FIBA and NBA/WNBA uses the jump ball to put the ball into play for all held balls.

Just two weeks ago, I officiated a boys' H.S. freshmen game that if we could used a jump ball to put the ball back into play after a held ball we could have had the ball back into play a lot sooner. Here is the situation: Visiting team does not provide a scorer, so the home scorebook (official scorebook) is the only scorebook at the scorer's table. The home team gains control of the ball off the jump ball to start the third overtime period (yeah, yeah, I know), I become the Trail opposite the table and check that the arrow is pointing toward's the visitor's basket and it is. We have no held balls or jump ball situations until there is a held ball under the visitors basket with thirty seconds left in the game and the visitors are down by three points. Up until this point in the overtime period we had not had any timeouts, so there were no opportunities to go to the table in the late going to check the book. You guessed it the horn sounds and I as the Referee (I violated the Danny Doss's No. 1 Rule of basketball officiating, never be the R) was called to Table. The Scorebook has the Home team with the arrow. I called my partner over and we discussed it for all of thirty seconds and declared the Scorebook incorrect and gave the ball to the Visitors. If we had been able to go to the jump ball we would not have had the mess we had. The Home Coach did not like it one bit and the Scorer was not happy either, but we managed not to have a technical foul on the Home Coach.