Problem Player

[walt]

I was an observer at a boy's varsity game last night between two rival schools. One player in particular was an issue for the crew the entire evening and it got me thinking about how to handle such a player and what I would've done had I been part of the crew. Prior to the jump ball while players and officials are getting into position to start, #2 WHITE is walking around and saying stuff like "you're came to our house to get whipped tonight!", "walking out losers tonight!" etc and clapping his hands and bobbing his head. U2 walks over to him and says something to him and #2 smiles and slaps U2 on the butt and gives him a thumbs up. Almost immediately from the start, #2 and #15 BLUE are going at each other pretty hard, fouls called appropriately, but it seems the two players are always saying something to one another. Crew warns them both.

Game progresses and now WHITE finds themselves down 10 in the 3rd quarter and the coach and fans are complaining about foul calls even though both teams are in the bonus. #2 gets fouled and has a 1 and 1 opportunity. The players are lined up and the lead signals 1 and 1. #2 as the Lead is doing this walks out of the semi-circle before the bounce of the ball. The Lead tells him to get back in and #2 decides to look over at the bench and wipe his hands on his jersey and basically ignore the Lead. The Lead again says 1 and 1 and walks up and puts the ball down on the free throw line. #2 steps forward and comes into the semi-circle and the Center calls the violation. The White team coach goes nuts and the Trail turns and tries to explain what happened. At the same time, #2 decides to go ahead and roll the ball toward the bench and waves off the Lead. The coach ends up with a warning and he sits down. The Center tries to say something to #2 but #2 walks away from him. He was not given a T at this point.

4th quarter, #2 drives to he basket and gets in a hard collision with his nemesis, #15 who correctly (IMO) gets called for a block. #2 is a little slow to get up but does and #15 gets up and smiles at #2 and claps his hands and then turns to walk away. As the official is heading to the table (who was the Lead on the free throw), #2 picks up the ball and tosses it, not a hard throw but still tosses it, and it hits #15 in the back. #15 now turns but teammates got a hold of #15 and #2 and keep them away from each other.

The official stops on his way to the table and issues a technical foul to #2 White for the toss of the ball. The coach goes nuts again and ends up getting stuck.

Blue wins the game by 18.

After the game, the crew was pretty upset by how the game ended with the technical and the overall attitude in the gym and with the players. As a crew, they discussed whether they should have given #2 a Flagrant Technical for tossing the ball at #15 and ejected him. Given what a pain #2 had been for them all night, not that #15 was innocent (ended the game with 4 fouls) but #2 was easily worse, I told them I could see possibly going with the Flagrant T at that point but was ok with just the unsporting T.

We've all had problem matchups and players like this. I figured I'd bring it here to see what you all think about how it was handled.