[Pantherdreams]

I'm not really in favour of rule changes or modifications that get more T's called.

We recently (last 2 years) had rules adapted so more things were considered unsportsmanlike behaviour = technical foul. Things like fouls before the ball has left the inbounders hand, any foul from behind or on the side of a player breaking away, hand in the face, yelling at the shooter, all these things are now T's.

In my experience its created a grey area that our local coaches struggle to deal with and as a result have a harder time dealing with us and managing their own kids. We are lucky to have very few jerk coaches in our area and for the most part (in the past) when kids would recieve a tech coaches in our area would deal with the unsportsmanlike behaviour (arguing, swearing, taunting) on the spot and bench the kid for a period of time or in some cases the remainder of the game on their own. They had very stringent team and school policies in regards to kids recieving T's. There was also never any debate over whether the T was deserved.

Now coaches are having to decide whether they feel the T was actually unsportsmanlike or just a unfortunate call based on the rules phrasing and their kids playing hard. Now you've got kids in the with T's you wouldn't normally have playing and in jeporady of getting a second inadvertantly and getting ejected. You have coaches debating that it wasn't unsportsmanlike angles, timing etc. Which obviously filters down to the crowd and players. Not too mention a T noe being a T in the eyes of kids, fans and coaches causing a lot more justification at least in people's minds.

Not that I have an issue with dealing with it personally, it just seems that making a T less meaningful could cause you problems as it has us. That being said we've only got technical fouls, intentional fouls, and personal fouls. So your varying levels of flagrant, technicals, etc may help deal with this issue.