The bottom line, it is very rare. If it happens you not need to panic, just fill in and laugh about it later.

Peace

Wouldn't it be better not to cross over? I don't like seeing that when the ball is live. I think that comes from working youth games with newer refs who kept crossing or staying in the middle then getting caught in the play. I'd rather the trail wait. Then another team gets the ball. Trail becomes lead. C to C. Lead becomes trail and hopefully he will recognize what is going on and cross from the baseline over safely so there are only 3 refs on one side briefly.

Again, I like the video and just a good one to watch so it can help you avoid these unusual but understandable situations.

So what do you do if no one but the Trail recognizes the mistake? Also, you have an entire sideline not covered. You also have the potential of officials spending several minutes potentially if the Trail never moves across the court.

Not sure any of this has to do with something newer officials do other than the initial mistake. There is no one-size-fits-all solution when you clearly have missed rotation. But usually, you cross when you get a chance ASAP. Yes, it there a potential of getting in the way? Sure, but that is why you do not miss rotations. ;)

Peace

The most typical missed rotation situation (and the one accounted for in mechanics books), is when the Lead makes a late rotation that Trail and Center fail to pick up. In that case, during transition, the old L/new T is instructed to move back to his original side, presumably because the old T did not see the rotation, and assumed that he would be Lead.

However, the OP situation is atypical, because it happens at the beginning of the game, and it is a real game, not a camp situation. I would hope that the OP crew redeemed themselves later in the game, but I think that the coaches would be questioning the crew's competence when they saw that display from the officials. Pre-game and jump ball mechanics in 3-person are standard for a reason: to enable a crew of any experience level to start the game correctly. If I was the C, and saw that R (who is Trail in jump ball situations), lines up behind me when he should be my partner, I go to Lead, and hope that my partner picks up on the error and goes to C. If not, we have very good endline/post coverage for 1 possession��. If I am R, I wait before I go to Trail, so that I fill in the correct gap (if the ball went left, I follow U1, if right, follow U2), based on where my Umpires lined up and where the ball went. This would be a good situation to break the ice at a pre-game, and get us to relax when needing to correct a bad rotation.

99% of coaches wouldn't even notice.


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You sure have a lot of opinions about something you have not done very long. I get it that is it a mistake, but as said, I doubt the coaches even noticed or many fans. And if they did, so what. Give it a possession or two and no one will even care. You are way too uptight over something that rarely happens and no one even notices in most cases at all. I cannot think of a single time in my career where a coach commented about a rotation of any kind. I doubt this was the first time that happened either.

Peace

Really Don't Care ...
 

Nor have coaches ever, in almost four decades, complained about a missed switch after a foul. They either don't know about the procedure, or, more importantly, really don't care.

Never have I heard, "Hey, you guys missed a switch", or, "Hey, aren't you guys supposed to switch?". I've heard, "That's bullshit", more times than I've heard about missed switches.

That's a bunch of BS. Everyone of the officials on the game would say the same thing, and yet s*** happens. Just adjust and pay for the beer. Unless it's one of the first 5 or so times you've worked three-person, there are far more important things to talk about than who goes where on a jump ball and what to do if someone goes to the wrong spot. It's something that only happens (we hope) once per game.

Evaluating Observers ...
 

Observers, especially evaluating observers, seeing a lot of missed switches, as they may see in a subvarsity game, now that's a different story. Sometimes it's confusion (even though all rookie officials have been trained in mechanics, and floor tested), but sometimes it's laziness. Either way, they'll get some constructive criticism, and if they don't mend their ways their journey up the ladder will be a bit slower than those subvarsity guys that switch at all relevant times.

A typical pregame we may have 10-15 minutes to talk as a crew prior to a game -- I'm certainly not wasting it on basic mechanics.

Pregames ...
 

I'm retiring from my day job as a chemist in ten weeks, and I'll be making myself available to work 3:30 p.m. middle school, and 4:00 p.m. freshman, games, as a type of unofficial mentor. I can certainly see ten to fifteen minute pregames with brand new, or very inexperienced, officials.

But in my varsity games, working with guys that I've worked with for decades, as either the referee, or the umpire, the pregames seldom go past five minutes (maybe a few extra minutes) especially toward the end of the season.