I think I goofed

[Hawks Coach]

Originally posted by lr2242
I was across the court from the ball, which was somewhere in a mob of players. Team A had been in possession of the ball and had advanced it to their offensive end.

It's hard from your original post to determine the precise sequence of events as you saw them. However, the things I key on are this mob of players plus the use of the past tense when referring to A's possession. It seems from reading this post that possession of the ball by A already was in doubt when it entered the mob of players, then you blew the whistle. If that is true, the first mistake was granting a TO if you do not know that the team requesting it has possession.

Once you whistled it dead, I would agree that it is probably easier to say that A had possession when you recognized the TO. But if you really made a mistake in recognizing the TO and realize it too late, you should bite the bullet, admit the mistake, and give the ball to B. It isn't going to completely placate B's coach (they lost a basket) and now A is mad as well, but it is the right thing to do.