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Originally Posted by BoomerSooner
The earlier thread concering leaving the bench during a fight got me to thinking about a situation that happened last season and how it should be enforced.
During a game, we had a player (we'll call him A6) on the bench begin taunting B1 following an airball 3pt shot from right in front of the bench. Before I could put a halt to it B1 fires a fist right into the side of A6's face. A6 ends up on the ground bleeding while A7 decides to retaliate wth a punch of his own. Not to be undone B2 jumps into the mess and decides to punch A7 and kick A6 who is on the ground.
By this point I've decided I'm not getting anywhere near the action and step back to take numbers and I motion for B's coach to help settle the situation. A's coach directs the rest of his bench to get away from the fight and begins trying to break up the 4 players involved in the fight. Considering the fight is on the bench, the remaining players for A moved toward the baseline, but onto the court. B3 who was not originally in the fight now decides to punch A8 who is now on the court avoiding the fight. My P jumps inbetween that situation before any retaliation can be taken by A8 or any other team members of A. Coaches finally get things settled and we are left to sort out the situation.
Between the two of us, we decide that A6, A7, B1, B2, and B3 were all considered to have participated in a fight and were thus ejected. We resumed play with 2 FT's for A and A's ball at mid-court. Remarkably nobody came off the bench for B and we didn't penalize A for the players that left the bench to avoid the fight. The part that was interesting about this story, however, was that B's coach wanted each of A's bench players that left the bench to avoid the fight to be ejected saying that if they had stayed put B3 wouldn't have gotten ejected (so in addition to A6 and A7, he wanted the other 6 bench players ejected blaming them for the actions of B3).
We laughed about it in the locker room afterwards, but with the clarification that simply leaving the bench regardless of participation in the fight, would anyone even consider taking the rule to its most literal interp and agree with B's coach in my case?
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1. I do not agree with the coach. The intent of the rule about not leaving the bench is to prevent a team member from entering the area of the altercation, not from vacating such an area. What the team members from the Team A bench did in this case was to the benefit of their safety and to prevent more problems. There is no way that I am going to penalize them for this.
2. However, I need to know whom A7 struck. I may not agree with the number of FTs that you awarded.
3. The flagrant Ts against A6 and B1 make a double foul and no FTs are awarded for that.
4. Dealing with the punches by A7 and B2 is more difficult. Unless they punched each other or punched opponents at approximately the same time, these fouls can't be considered a double foul or a simultaneous foul, thus I would penalize these fouls in the order of occurrence and award 2FTs to each team. If one punch followed the other and was clearly in retaliation, then this is definitely the way to go.
5. Lastly, two FTs are awarded to Team A for B3's punch at the end of everything, and obviously Team A gets the ball at the division line.