6 on the Court -- unnoticed...

[Raymond]

Originally Posted by BillyMac

In my hypothetical situation nobody knew when extra player "showed up" (walked onto the court). The extra player was discovered during a dead ball.

It was a hypothetical situation. It didn't happen to me. Probably will never happen to anybody. It was posted to show an extreme example of an extra player discovered during a dead ball and whether, or not, the team should be penalized with a technical foul. I know for sure that we can't penalize an individual player for not reporting and/or not being beckoned because all substitutes reported to the scorer, and all were beckoned by an official. Also, we don't know who the extra player was.



Officiate basketball long enough (thirty-six years for me) and you'll eventually find yourself with six players on the court no matter how good your mechanics are, and no matter how frequently you check incoming and outgoing substitutes, and count players after intermissions and/or timeouts. When it happens you have to know how to properly penalize it, not just make up stuff as you go along.

Then what is your confusion about the rule? If discovered during a dead ball, you can't do anything but send the player off. If discovered during a live ball, assess the T.