[tomegun]

I've been back in Vegas since March and we recently began to meet as a group to discuss rules. We aren't meeting as an association - the situation with association(s) is horrible here, but that is another story. We are just a group of officials who are talking about the rules and practical application in an effort to improve consistency.

We started with rule 4 and only made it to "Dribble" I believe. We aren't just reading through the book and taking it at face value; we are having discussions about what is actually going to happen in a game.

For instance, we talked about dunking in pregame. My opinion is that we try to find reasons to ignore obvious dunks then when we decide to call it we discuss it with the head coach as if he is going to change our minds. I know there is a fine line, but I'm not debating this with a coach. I will inform him about who dunked, what we are going to do and then - as Jim Birch says - show him my backside. During this discussion the definition of dunking was brought in and someone asked if we are going to call it by the rulebook definition - dunking by touching the rim versus forcing the ball down into the hoop. The group sentiment was no and that would be splitting hairs.

Does anyone else do anything like this? If we did it on here - tried to hit some high points since we can't go over everything - would things get out of hand?