Quote:
Originally Posted by Rusty Gilbert
As officials, we are responsible for recognizing and awarding legitimate time out requests. The official scorer keeps up with the "how many" and, by rule, advises an official when a team has used its last timeout so that the official, by rule, can advise the head coach that the team has no timeouts remaining. It's the same way with fouls. We call them, the scorer records them and keeps the count. When a participant uses up all they've got, the scorer tells us and then we tell the head coach and the disqualified participant. Now, we should always be able to answer a coach's "do I have any timeouts left?" with either "yes" or "no." But the "how many are left" question is not one we need to be answering. Teams have stats people, assistant coaches, etc. who can record/check/recheck/verify these issues with the table. And what I've noticed is that officials who give attention to keeping up with timeouts often offer the information to coaches without ever being asked! The big problem happens when we as officials assume responsibility for an area of the game that is really someone else's responsibility. And here is where the water hits the wheel: What if you give the coach incorrect information? It's neither rude nor unprofessional to respond to the "how many timeouts do I have left?" question with, "Coach, I'm not sure about that. You'll have to check with the scorer's table for that information."
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Great post from a member with only about 100 posts. I agree with you completely. It's not our job to remember, and share, this information, especially if we share incorrect information. I do agree somewhat with previous posters that knowledge of such information would help if a scorebook error came up, but I believe that the disadvantages of remembering, and sharing, this knowledge, slightly outweighs the advantages.
There are some great officials who have a philosophy that they should be aware when a star player has picked up their fourth foul, and that this may impact a future "gray area" foul call. Sorry. I wouldn't be able to sleep that night if I used such information to "color" my later call.
My local board has been criticized by some Forum members, including me, for requiring us to keep switching an extra whistle from pocket, to pocket, to help insure that the possession arrow is pointing in the correct direction. I certainly understood the need to do this back in 1985, when we first started using the arrow, instead of jump balls, there were many arrow mistakes back then, but not now in 2008.
We as officials need to keep our eye on the scoreboard, and use our memory, to know when we've reached the seventh, or tenth, team foul, for the simple reason to avoid the dreaded correctable error. That's all I want to keep track of. I have a lot of more important things to be aware of in the game, like primary coverage areas, block/charge, advantage/disadvantage, displacement, proper administration of throwins, and free throws, etc. Maybe it's because I'm getting old, but that all my 55 year old brain can handle.
Rusty Gilbert: "Here is where the water hits the wheel"? Is this a Southern idiom? I've never heard it before. And Connecticut used to have hundreds of mills.