Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin W
I am a coach of a youth 4th 5th grade girls basketball team. We had a game today and I argued with an official that he was handing the ball in to quickly. As soon as the girl stepped up that was throwing it in he would hand it to her and start the 5 second count. This resulted in several turnovers for us because we were not set up and scattered across the floor. I kept my cool for the first 4 or 5 times, but finally called him over on a timeout and voiced my opinion. He said he had been officiating youth basketball for 15 years and had never heard of any rules when handing the ball in. Well I played basketball since I was 5 to 34 and watched thousands of games in between and unless a team won't come out of a time-out in time the officials always allow the teams to set up before handing the ball to the passer. Is there any official rules in the book on this?
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Kevin,
One suggestion is to have the inbounder go to the throw-in spot a bit more deliberately. There is not a requirement that the team in possession must sprint to the throw-in spot. Make sure her teammates DO get quickly to their spots, but have the person taking the throw-in get their a bit slower.
Assuming that there are no subs coming in and no fouls to report (even in these cases, there is no specified time requirements, but these activities should give a team more than enough time to get in position for a throw-in), there is no specified time for the official to wait to put the ball at the disposition of the thrower. By the time I point to the specific spot and make eye contact with my partner(s), generally, the offense is in position for the play.
If a team is slow to get lined up, they may not be in position prior to the inbounder receiving the ball from one of us. But, this is very rare. We try to get the ball in play quickly to keep the flow of the game, but, we also try to give the offense (and defense) a reasonable amount of time to get ready for spot throw-ins.