Fight
 

End of first half. 65 feet shot, horn, whistle on the clear miss and the shooter takes 3 walking steps and bumps into a defender looking back at the shot. Incidental contact is similar to bumping into someone around the water cooler at work. Instead of excuse me, both end up swinging. Chaos, but no one else fought. All 3 officials notice that BOTH benches are empty? Both coaches insist that their benches were empty because they were headed to locker room.

What do you guys have?

Unless I see different, I'm going to assume the coaches were telling the truth. Players are usually up and moving quickly at the horn.

Toss A1 and B1 and move on. Just hope the tape doesn't show the coaches were lying.

Toss the two players involved in the fight. Then toss everybody from both teams that wasn't in the game to finish the half. Play 4 on 4 to start the second half.

I guess I'm missing something.....where were other players? In the locker room? No worries then. If they were on the floor near the fight, make your best judgement. Shouldn't be hard to find players, just look to see where they were.

Agreed with Adam. Fight happens during intermission, during which time players are allowed to leave bench (to go to locker room). Without definitive knowledge of any of those players taking part in the shenanigans, I can't come up with a rule reference to support implementing any other punitive measures.

Devil,

Nobody was in the locker room. Fracas occurred within 2 seconds of horn going off. Players and team members rushed to the fight. We had a lot of people on the floor AND empty benches.

Uni,

So, as soon as horn goes off and the play is dead, everybody is a team member/bench personnel???

People rushed to the fight within 2 seconds of the horn. Some had game jerseys on and some had warmups on. Either way, we had empty benches.
As soon as the horn sounds and the play is dead, is EVERYBODY considered bench personnel? The 8 "players" on the floor not fighting?

If they "rushed to the fight" then perhaps we have more technicals/ejections to hand out. HTBT moment I guess.

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Horn goes off, try missed then two in fracas. They are bench personnel. They each get flagrant Ts for fighting and are gone. Each coach gets An indirect for that. No FTs for those cause offset.

Bench players leaving bench when fight may break out. Not as clear since they are allowed to leave bench and be on court during intermission. If they don't participate in fight not sure I can toss them. Clearly if they participate they are gone.
Now, the point of rule is to limit the people around fracas. If they all run to it, and not to locker room surely violates spirit of rule. toss them all, coach gets another indirect T. If the number leaving the bench is equal no FTs. If unequal, team with less coming on near fracas gets two FTs.

I suppose I would try to figure out who all came near the fracas and toss them in this situation. I wouldn't automatically toss everyone. The kid who is on the floor but not real close (it is an intermission) doesn't deserve to be tossed, imo. It would probably be impossible to figure out everybody that's near the fight. Pick out the obvious if you can and move on. Coaches get another indirect T and if one team has more bad guys at fracas other gets two FTs. If I knew there were some innocent kids but coujdnt determine the bad ones I'd do what Adam said. I'd want to be sure before tossing. Fights are bad....

Ps. I think that is how to administer. As I think more..if they don't participate I'm likely to let them all stay because of the intermission factor. Hope I never have to decide...

Ouch, rushing to the fight changes things. Did the fight start after the horn? If so, then it's intermission time and everyone is bench personnel. The players on the bench would have been fine heading to the locker room, but rushing to the fight changes that.

Honestly, I'm going to need to be convinced why they shouldn't all be tossed in that case.

Also, even if you don't, each coach gets in indirect T and the accompanying seatbelt.

Here you had a try in flight, horn and then clearly missed try making ball dead and ending quarter. Everybody is now bench personnel. All 10 who were in game and of course, all others. During intermission everybody is bench personnel.

Yet the rules regarding fighting and the behavior of bench personnel are written in the context of it not being an intermission. I don't think you'd treat the 5 people who were the players as if they came off the bench when a fight occurred. They were legally on the floor having been players. You might treat them as bench personnel so far as indirect T's go, however, but not for the purposes of disqualification if they do not participate.

Also, if the true bench personnel were heading towards their locker room, they'd be authorized to do that too. So, I would have no problem not treating them as leaving the bench for a fight unless they showed some sort of aggressive action related to the fight.

I never want to be just a black and white type official when there is gray involved. For example, the instant that the clock shows 00 is the 10 people/team members/players now team members because it is now half time? THE VERY INSTANT? And, just because it is now halftime, is it okay for "people" (you choose the right word) to rush toward the fight? How does an official know other than actual fighting if the kid is merely headed to the locker room or is leaving the bench area because a fight broke out? One team's locker room path led toward the fight and the other led away from it.

We teach our officials to get eyes on the bench. When they did, there was nobody on the bench. There is no way to determine a kid's intention. In my opinion, he is either headed towards the locker room or headed toward the fight. Also, there wasn't enough time elapsed (from shot,horn and whistle) to altercation for the coaches to state that the kids milling around the fight were merely headed to the locker room. 10 minutes later, kids were still not in their locker room for halftime purposes?

Yes, I agree. It is important to know in OP that they are bench personnel because of the two players fighting. They go and coach gets indirect and is seat belted.

Now, here's why I'm wondering who I can toss:
As you point out the players on the floor at end of half certainly have a right to be there. When the shot is obvioudly missed the bench has a right to be on the floor. Half over. When the long shot was taken those two players were fairly close together. Chances of the other 8 being right there...not good. Let's say some of the other 8 run to the fight and mouth. Just as the bench kids do. They all have a right to be on floor at that moment. But if they all run to fight am I only going to toss the bench kids?

Frankly, if kids do run on floor in that circumstance and are restrained enough not to get involved I probably woukdnt toss anybody. They didn't leave bench go get involved in fight. They left it cause half over and then went to the fight. I can't see tossing them because they went to fight and not the other 8 if they ran to it. 2 kids started the BS, am I going to kick everybody out and declare game over? I'm just thinking as I go so if I've screwed up on my thoughts go easy.

Read rest of Mulk's post. If the players won't leave the floor there's a a basis to penalize or toss the player separate from the leaving bench stuff. Simply unspotrsmanlike T or Flagrant T and toss.