I'm all for defending yourself.

Watch the video again. What does the official do after being knocked to the ground? He gathers himself, stands up and instead of heading directly to a lockerroom or somewhere safe off the court, gets right up in a kid's face and chest bumps him. A KID.

Walk or jog away, man. Man up, drop the ego and get yourself immediately out of the situation.

The video will back you up 100. Instead, the video shows the official inviting continued violence.

+100

I don't blame the official at all. All those "kids" were bigger than him and assaulted him.


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Actually, I do not give a damn what he did afterward. If you are assaulted people will lose their minds even for a moment. I have no issues with the situation because he did not appear to start it. And I am sorry have you been to basketball games in these environments? You have a lot of big players that in some cases look much older than kids. Also, this official does not look very old either. He might be a young guy where what he does in his 20s, he is not doing in his 50s.

To each his own. If you want to go away and hope no one fights you, be my guest. I am not taking an ass whoopin for anybody.

Honestly, who cares in the end? I am not working these games anymore in these kinds of settings for these kinds of reasons. And this official for all we know is no more than a guy with a striped shirt, what they pay for BTW.

Peace

Many times.

My point exactly. Nobody is going to whip my ass because my ass won't be anywhere near someone(s) that wants to try.

If you say so. I guess you are going to run out of the building? Not always practical.

Peace

I am with you and am so tired of people acting like it's so outrageous for us to get emotional every once in awhile when these high schoolers and "coaches" (I use that term lightly for this kind of basketball) cross the line.

It makes me laugh how these travel ball teams and tournament directors want better officiating yet don't want to pay up and only use 2-person crews. And then when good varsity or college officials come work the games, they get upset when they can't get away with what usual officials for these tournaments let them get away with.

I've been to a few camps where travel/AAU was the tournament being used and coaches had to be restrained or removed by police several times with 3 officials on the floor and college or high school officials working. So even when they get "better officials" they still act a fool. So it does not matter what we do or what they get, the environment makes this OK. Again the 3rd incident in Georgia that got out of hand.

Peace

I'm not sure anyone here feels it's outrageous, however; give me an example when getting emotional as an official has resolved a situation or has made it better? To me it is not different in getting into a debate with a coach thinking you are going to make him/her see things your way in the heat of the moment. It just doesn't happen or work that way..... We have to rise above and typically disengage, no matter how off-base a coach is. We have tools given to us to use for these situations. Those tools should handle 99% of the situations we see.

I just saw this past Sunday an older/experienced official get into a back-and-forth with a coach, started getting emotional about it, and ended up whacking the coach, 100% because he got emotional. In this particular situation, he easily could have just told the coach what he had and walked away, but instead made it about who could puff their chest out further and how he was right and the coach was wrong. It was just flat out ugly and no one in the gym was very impressed with either of them.

There is normally more than enough, if not too much, emotion already involved in youth sports. As sporting officials, I think it behooves us to not add to that element of the game, rather an opposite, steady, controlled influence whenever possible. I believe the official in this OP could have been that opposite and much needed force. 80% of the video wouldn't exist if he had.....

Quite frankly, I think the occasional emotional reaction from an official tends to be a good thing to put coaches and players in place. Offseason game like this, all bets are off. You wanna start swinging? Don't be surprised when someone swings back. With tournaments like these where there is literally no oversight of the courts, drastic measures are necessary.

Also let's remember that this kind of thing would never happen in a real game with administrators, security, and real coaches. In the couple times it has happened (officials getting physically assaulted), appropriate authorities acted immediately and the offenders were dismissed from their respective programs.

Sometimes you have little no choice. I have a story to tell that illustrates this fact.

I had a "travel" game about 2 years ago of a big shoe company tournament.

I was in a convention center that had probably a little over 60 courts on the same floor and building. So it was impossible to hear clearly these portable scoreboards that are often used in these situations. Whistles and noise everywhere.

Well, I was on a court in a 2 person game where I was the lead and opposite table. There were seconds in the game and in front of me was a putback of a rebound, then shot to win the game. The putback went in the basket and my partner who was right next to the table ruled the shot good. I thought nothing of it but as I was walking off the court, I had a bunch of players and coaches directly in my face. Now I did not make the ruling at all, but I had to get these people out of my face. So I asked my partner, "What did you rule?" He said, "I counted the basket." I said "OK, game over and proceeded to walk off the court but was followed by a coach or two and a parent who was a blonde haired woman who told me aggressively, "You have to change this call!" I said basically that she needed to get out of my face and walked away. As I walked away, she grabbed my arm rather aggressively. I did not know at the time who grabbed my arm, but I turned around and this woman was there holding my arm. I aggressively pulled my arm away and I immediately said to this woman in the most profane way, "You need to get out of my.........face and don't you ever put your........hands on me in life!!!" She immediately backed off but continued to try to make me change a call that I did not make in the first place. She was still in my space, I had no idea what was going to happen or who was a threat. Then the team director or head guy of the team came to me also trying to get me to change the call and told me how much money he spent. I had to basically get loud and even aggressive to get these people out of my space. It ended up working where they were a little bit on their heals. I am not an opposing figure physically, but I am about 6 feet tall and was taller than a couple of the people that were around me. I used that to my advantage as well as my tone which caused a scene on purpose.

The assignor of this tournament is a good friend of mine and a college and state final official. He came to me later to ask me about what happened as there were witnesses and the team complained to the tournament people and he came to address the situation. Well the woman admitted to grabbing me and he basically dismissed her immediately and told them in so many words they do not have a right to behave that way, but I am convinced if I just "walked away" when there was really nowhere to go, the incident would have gotten worse IMO. I would not have worked this tournament without the person that I know assigning the games. And I have done it since that runs at the same time in July.

I do not buy this, "We have to be nice at all times" BS. I think we have to read the sitaution and act accordingly. Because if things like this happened during a real game, we have not only appropriate remedies there are procedures to avoid such things all together. In summer games we might not even have a locker room or a safe place to go. And the participants also know they can do things and they will play or participate in the later games. We are not in the most authoritative position.

Peace

Some of it, sure. But be honest: not ALL of that was self defense.

So much for security being present at the tournament. Where were they?

That team and those players are bad news and should not be allowed at ANY tournament.

First things first: do not let anything SAID set you off. Words are not legitimate provocation for violence in any respect. It certainly isn't sufficient for us. You can always walk away from words; no exceptions. You walk toward security and get them to handle it, but you keep walking.

Second, once someone puts hands on you, you have the absolute right to get free. I would strongly suggest that at that point, you retreat. If that is impossible, then you defend yourself in a manner sufficient to the threat. If a 14 year old 5'4" girl grabs you and won't let go, you don't get to cold cock her when you get the chance. You keep her from continuing to assault you, even to the point of throwing her down IF NECESSARY, but you don't get a chance to exact revenge (if you will) on her for being that stupid. With a 6'3" muscular young man, things are much different. He poses a legitimate threat to your physical safety. I'm putting a technique on him that will physically STOP him (stop is the key word) and quite possibly will seriously injure him. But my main focus is on stopping him.

Obviously, any game is over (suspended) when there is violence against an official that isn't very isolated (i.e. ONE player goes totally berzerk and other players hold him back). You call the police and file a report. DO NOT let anyone talk you out of calling the police because you might very well be arrested later on a bogus charge if THEY call the police and lie.

Always be proactive in these situations. And for all that is good, STOP working AAU or any of these other crap summer league/tournament games. Then and only then will they start giving us the respect we deserve.

Have you never worked an offseason tournament? Not unusual at all for these types of events to lack security. That would require the organizers taking more money out of their pockets.

One of the many reasons not to work this stuff.

It appears the refs were attacked first but they did very little to deescalate the situation. The one guy broke free and charged somebody. I'm not buying the self-defense argument for at least part of this. Not to mention, strategically, there are more of them than there are of you so unless you're Bruce Lee, you are probably going to get the worst of it. Noble to defend you comrades, but once the group of you have the chance, time to get out of there and not decide to mix it up.

I think sometimes the coaches used to weak officials they can bully have a hard time when they get the refs who actually know what they are doing. They are used to getting away with things and used to their players getting away with things. When those things get called, the knuckleheads have trouble adjusting.