There were a couple of things that I forgot to mention that I think might be interesting to those of us who work primarily, or solely, HS games and below. Two comments in particular stuck in my mind from my try-out.
After coming off the floor, following my 15 minutes of fame, the supervisor of officials told us to call contact as fouls. His exact words were "We don't use that advantage/disadvantage crap here." He said that you can't be on the floor "looking for things
not to call".
Now this was very interesting to me, b/c for 10 years now, I've been told by my IAABO trainers "Any monkey can blow a whistle. A good official knows when NOT to blow the whistle." So naturally, I have tried to develop the habit of holding off for a second to see if the contact affects the play. The observer at my try-out seemed to be saying that he does not want his officials to do that. If there's contact, call a foul. It seems to me that if we did things that way, we'd have a lot of what Drake has called "cheap and-1's". I have to say that I was confused and unsure about how to implement his advice.
The second comment was made by a USBL official who was just there to help out. He said, "High school and college ball are about rules and interpretations. Pro ball is about entertainment. You better know who the fans are at the game to see."
So despite the protestations of some of our fellow posters on this board, I saw some evidence for the claim that star players are to be treated differently than the other players in a pro system. Now, obviously, that's not proof, and I'm not trying to start a broo-ha-ha. I'm just reporting to you what I was told.
As you can probably guess, I've been going over the whole day in my head over the course of the last few days. I'm just sharing some of that with you. I'll stop now!!
Chuck