3-Man SNAFU
 

What in the world is this? The R goes correctly to the trail position opposite the table, but the U2 fails to go to Lead, and remains as the "C". "Lead" then rotates over to the opposite side, which the Lead typically should do when the strong side moves to the other side. However, this situation results in 3 officials all on the same side of the court. Fortunately, there is an out of bounds call quickly afterwards, and the officials appear to align properly following the out of bounds call.

What would you have done if you saw that your partner failed to assume his correct position (e.g. the person who should be Lead remains at Center)? If you are Trail, do you go away from the side with the improper lead? If "Lead". do you move up to create a T-C*-C configuration, and hope that the C-who-should-be-Lead realizes his situation?

T goes to the wrong side. Need to hesitate more, recognize the direction of the ball, and go to the proper side.

It happens. All you can do is have an aware official try to align the crew. Might involve crossing over the floor or moving someone.

Not a tragedy. Something to laugh about at the bar afterwards, though.


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I would tease them profusely about doing that. Then I would say you owe us drinks after the game. And I would have laughed at them for some time or made further jokes about them until it was not funny. Then moved on.

Peace

Over A Cold Adult Beverage ...
 

They spotted it, and they fixed it.

Two years ago, as the trail in a two person game, during a free throw, I ended up on the table side of the court. My partner compensated by moving over to the opposite side as lead. I simply zoned out, possibly harkening back to the old "Cadillac Position Mechanics" of yesteryear. My partner certainly let me know about the screw up the next time we talked.

Several years ago, also in a two person game, as the lead, I decided to move across the lane to come ball side to get a better look at a post play situation. And then I forgot that I moved across the lane, and stayed there. There's a turnover so I start running up the court, with my partner and I on the same side of the court. We both realized the problem at the same time so he quickly moves across the basket line to balance out the court. Also on this occasion, my partner certainly let me know about the screw up the next time we talked.

Officials love to give each other a hard time. Some of us are trained to do it, for others it's in our blood. But we all do it, especially over cold adult beverages.

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"A good pre-game would prevent that from happening."

Also, "What about in NBA and FIBA? Would it be the same?

I wouldn't want the trail running across like that even though he did it safely. But honestly, it is understandable. I think it's a good learning video because you can see how easily it can happen.

These guys are next level. The Lead correctly determines that a rotation would put the crew in a much better ball-side position, with three officials available to referee strong side post and rebounding action. Much like it is sometimes ok to have two Centers, it is sometimes ok to have Lead, Center, and Trail strong-side. If there is an obvious foul on the weak side then the player will call it.

AremRed, you make me laugh. With that crew, we might have a case for 4-person mechanics at the high school level :p.

All joking aside, if I saw that the official who should have been the lead failed to drop down and stayed at center instead, I'd cross the floor. If that doesn't work, I'd make the "center" buy one round of drinks for all of us after the game.

You recognize that it was the R who made the mistake here, right? He should have come "camera side". U1 and U2 went where they were supposed to, originally.

The choices to fix it are to have R (Trail) cross over (as he did) or for U2 to go to lead and communicate to U1 to go back up to center.

Silly me. The video was at a somewhat wonky angle, so I mixed up left and right. U1 and U2 did what they should have done, but R went behind U2 instead of U1. If U2 dropped to Lead, U1 could come up to C, and a rotation would rectify the situation, which is what I thought the crew would do. However, the video turned into YouTube comedy.
Now I understand why R should hesitate before choosing a direction to go, because it ended up being his error that put the crew in a ridiculous position.

Yes the R made the initial mistake, but the C needs to have a little better awareness than that. His Spider senses should have been going off knowing he had someone above him. Since C didn't recognize the R's mistake, R is left with the "walk of shame" across the court. They got lucky the ball went out of bounds. As the R here, just stay in the middle until the crowd passes and fill in the empty spot.

This is like a missed rotation. The person that made the original move correct the move. If other officials figure this out, then that is great. But this is just a mistake, just go fill in if you are the R. And the R should have known better anyway. Again, a minor issue in the overall game and someone is buying the beer.

Peace

Ridiculous?

It's one possession. Stuff happens.




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And this might only happen once in an entire year. I cannot remember the last time this took place in a real game. Camp games? Well that is a different story and usually done by inexperienced 3 person officials.

Peace

This particular item, maybe.

Someone missing a rotation and someone needing to adjust to fill in -- happens a couple of times a season, I'd guess.

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.