Big Baller Forfeits
 

LaVar Ball pulls Big Ballers AAU team off court after receiving technical foul

Good riddance.

1. That looks like a holding foul to me.
2. I will henceforth refer to him as Big Cry Baby.
3. Who is cheating?
4. The irony of the article's final quote is truly wonderful given the incorrect grammar used by the one making the critical statement.
5. The Lakers don't believe that this clown is going to be a problem?

Great example of why not to work this BS.

He's an idiot. Ignore him and he'll go away.

Unfortunately, he won't. :(

Well Played Nevadaref ...
 

It took me a while, but I finally got it. Back in the mid-twentieth century, "balling" was a slang term for crying ("Quit your balling"). I wonder if LaVar Ball is old enough to realize that?

And 1.....
And 1.....
And 1.....

I don't see that in the rulebook!

This can only get worse.
He already had his fame and now its all about him, or had it always been that way?

Are you referring to how officials should handle him? Because in summer ball (which I hardly work any of) especially I guarantee you that I am NOT ignoring him, and if the tournament director wants to chew my ass for it, they can find another official.

Maybe this was a camp for the officials, I don't know. But I wouldn't tolerate that BS in a high school game, there's not a chance I'm tolerating it for the pennies we make in AAU.

The moral of the story is don't do AAU. He's high profile idiot. There are many more. There's no penalty for being an idiot there. The directors care about their tournament and view referees as a dime a dozen.

Of course, if referees and assigners would stop selling out to the TDs for money, maybe, just maybe, they would view us as more than "a dime a dozen" and stop pandering to coaches who "paid to be there." On the flip side, I can't really hold it against officials who want to make money; I'm just not willing to work 2-man (typically what off-season ball is around here) for pocket change while being expected to put up with all the nonsense. And in my experience, most good referees aren't either.

I think it depends on who is running the tournament and who is assigning the tournament. I just worked a tournament where it was a camp and we were told to handle our business. The officiating was looked at as an asset and not a liability. There are more than enough tournaments where they can worry about where the officiating is coming from. But the reality is it only as good as you want it to be. You only do not respect the officials, it gets around. Even in the large area I live there are officials that refuse to work games in AAU (including myself) without some backing and support by the people assigning.

Peace

I agree that a lot of it depends on who the assigner or TD is, but the reality is there are too many assigners and TDs whose philosophy is "don't rock the boat" to keep the assigning gig/keep teams with s*ithead "coaches" coming back and paying.

I do think you'd agree with me that a camp setting is often different from a non-camp setting. The camp directors want the games officiated like sanctioned games in order to best evaluate the campers, so they make that clear to the TD up front that they will be taking care of business if necessary. Of course, plenty of camp directors are spineless and will tell their campers to pander to the coaches. Ironically, the camps I've been to where the latter has been the case have more often been high school team camps vs. AAU-type events. But the high school camps have real coaches who answer to an AD/principal and thus you seldom run into issues, anyway.

I mean exactly what I said. People need to ignore him. Don't put him on TV. Don't post about him on the Internet.

If people like ESPN would ignore him and stop putting him on TV, he would go away. Don't give him an audience.

Really? I cannot imagine many camp directors giving this instruction. Never seen it personally in the ~20 camps I've been to in the last 5 years.

Like you are doing right now? :D

Yes really. It may not be the norm, but it happens. Just last summer I went to a required camp for the SCHSL. One of the first things the head clinician said was "they don't want us to eject coaches." He told us just to keep calling technical fouls until the coach shuts up. Well, in my second game we have a PITA coach who gets a T. I go over and remind him that he has to sit by rule (we were never told there was no seatbelt rule for the camp). He keeps refusing, so I whack him, and then out of nowhere one of the camp directors chews my ass and tells me to rescind it. The head clinician doesn't back me up; in front of the entire gym he spinelessly tells me to "do what he said." We get through the game and I tell the clinician to give me my money back if he doesn't want me to be there. He somewhat apologized and took responsibility, but I will never go back to his camp and tell officials that story whenever they ask me about my review of the camp.

I'm paying money to be there. I'm not going to subject myself to that BS. Again, certainly not the norm for camps, but it absolutely happens.