[hawk65]

NFHS. 9-3-3 says "A player shall not leave the floor for an unauthorized reason." The case book talks about a player leaving the floor to avoid a pick by the opponent or to use a pick set by a teammate(s) or to stop the clock to negate an advantage by the opponent. Illustration 9-3-3 shows a player going out of bounds to brush a defender into a screen set by teammates. What if a player is running his offense, passing to a guard at the top of the key or to a wing near the endline then running through the zone and wandering out of bounds on the back side of a zone? He's not scraping a defender into a screen, he's simply running through the zone, dipping anywhere from a foot to as much as three feet beyond the end line, running 3-5 steps out of bounds then entering the other side of the court, similar to the arc shown on NFHS Simplified and Illustrated Illustration 9-3-3 without any screens/picks. Is that a violation? Where is "unauthorized reason" defined? Would you call it?

I titled this "Player(s)..." (plural) because it happened several times with different players. I warned the first time ("Stay on the court!") then called a violation the next time. Subsequently, they continued to do the same thing so I warned 2-3 times more (didn't want to over-officiate) but finally called another violation. Partner said I shouldn't call it - it wasn't a violation. He also said he was coached to set a pick with one foot out-of-bounds (clearly, not just foot on the line) to force an opponent who wanted to go around the screen to go out-of-bounds. Would you call that on the screener if you saw it?