40 seconds to go. Our team has a throwin, backcourt on the baseline. The other team is pressing in the backcourt. The ball crosses half court around the 8 second count at which point the timer finally starts the clock. The ball is immediately knocked out of bounds. Now, I know as an assistant and I have no status but I could not help myself and said to the official that the clock did not start properly and why is this not a correctable error? The official replied, "because I am not the timer". He administered the throwin and the game went on.

My question is this? If one of the officials had looked at the clock prior to the baseline throwin and had definite knowledge of the time left on the clock, I am pretty sure from prior threads that you could use the timing of the 10 second count as definite knowledge to reset the clock. Is this correct?

Second part. What if the ball crosses half court and is dribbled several times before going out of bounds. If the clock was started as the ball crossed half court the clock may run from 40 to 36. Unless the official glanced up right when the clock started they will not know when the clocked started exacty. They will have definite knowledge that at least 8 seconds should have run off because that is what they chopped on the 10 second count. Would you run off 4 more seconds? More because there was dribbling after it crossed the half court? Or run none because you do not have definite knowledge of the exact time? Seems like in fairness some should be run off.

An official can take off time if he has definite knowledge. In this case he had a 10 second count and can use that to help him adjust the clock.

In both cases, if the official stopped his 10-second count before the ball went out-of-bounds, then he can't add any time back on the clock. You have to know <b>exactly</b> how much time to put back on. Iow, you have to also know <b>exactly</b> how much time elapsed from the end of the back-court count until the time that ball went OOB, as well as the actual time consumed by the back-court count before that.

We can use the actual backcourt count to adjust the clock. We can't use the backcourt count <b>plus</b> any additional time. We don't know exactly what the "additional time" is.

I'm not going to argue about the rule, JR, because I know you're right. But I do have a question. Why wouldn't it be okay, in this case to run off 8 seconds? The ref does have definite knowledge about that amount even there it's not the total amount. Why doesn't the rule allow that?

Also, if the ref had glanced up, seen that the clock didn't start, and then kept counting even though the ball was in the front court, could that count be used?

Also, if the ref glanced up, saw that the clock didn't start, and then whistled the ball dead as soon as it gained front court status, well, wouldn't that be the best outcome?

1. yes.

2. You mean the clock starts late but the official does not know when it started? In that case you can use definite knowledge (backcourt count and/or 5 second counts) to adjust the clock to what it should be by those counts. I think this is what JR is saying but I can't figure him out exactly.

JR is saying what you're kinda saying, Dan. You can only take time off the clock if you know the <b>exact</b> time</b> that needs to be taken off- -i.e. a count or a combination of continuous counts. If you don't have <b>definite</b> knowledge of the <b>exact</b> time, then you can't run <b>any</b> time off the clock. It's not a matter of being fair; it's a matter of the rules not allowing us to guess.

why not if knowing the time before the ball was inbounded set it back to that time and just throw the ball in again.

Ah, the proverbial do-over rears its ugly head.

Why not? Well, probably because there's no NFHS or NCAA rule that would allow you to do that.

Unless maybe you think that there's something in the NBA manual that would let you do it, hey, then by all means go for it.