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Old Wed Jul 30, 2008, 04:18pm
Y2Koach Y2Koach is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2007
Posts: 117
Making Calls out of your primary.

We all know that good officials, like good players, have good vision of what is happening on the court and use their peripheral vision to get a better perspective beyond what is happening immediately in front of them. At the same time, officials and players are expected to do the job they are assigned and venturing out of their assigned task can have consequences, good or bad.

For example, a player is supposed to set a down screen for his teammate to pop out to the wing, but sees that his defender is cheating over to anticipate the screen; should the player do his job and set the screen anyways, or break off of the plan and slip the screen to make himself available for an uncontested layup? How does that affect his team and/or teammate?

And how does this relate to the officials? Well officials are supposed to focus on the action in their primary areas, but with so much going on and 10 players for 2 (or 3) officials to officiate, things can get difficult. Multiple players cutting from one area to another, bodies getting in the way of lines of vision, peripheral vision, angles and perspective. When an official notices a violation outside of their primary area, what should he do? Risk stepping on the toes of or offending his partner to make the right call that his partner may have missed due to obstruction/angle/etc? Ignore the violation and just focus on the happenings in his primary area? What is more important, the ego of his partner or the good of game? How do you react if your partner makes a call in your area? How do you explain an obvious call that goes uncalled by your partner when it's obvious you saw it? Do you even bother explaining it when questioned about the call/no call?

I know this might be a touchy subject.
Please discuss without name calling or hair pulling.
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