LONG FOUL CALL

[SMEngmann]

Originally posted by M&M Guy
In 2-person mechanics, it is the L's job in a fast-break transition to be on-ball, and the T's job to stay back with the other players and referee off-ball.

What exactly are you refereeing when staying back? Are you watching for an illegal screen 60 feet behind the play? Of course not because there's nothing to call in that situation, as I said earlier, if you're calling something off ball that has completely nothing to do with the play which is half a court ahead, there'd better be blood. What you can do is help your partner out in transition on the secondary defender on the weak side that he might not see. By helping out you allow him to avoid having to possibly guess or miss a foul in transition, a potentially emotional foul, which missing could easily lead to the crew losing control of the game (just see what happened in the original scenario).

Is there a chance that someone in the backcourt will deck someone? Of course, but it's minute and almost certainly something would have led up to that action. If you didn't see the buildup, the problem occured well before. As has been said, there are trade-offs in 2 whistle, and the odds greatly favor me hustling up and helping my partner, unless there's a clearly defined reason for me to stay that I can tell my supervisor.

Little things can ruin games, say partner misses the foul call that I could've helped on and the supervisor reviews the tape and asks me, "Why were you 70 feet away when you could've helped on that," it might be different where I am than you, but the response, "I was watching the other players" doesn't cut it if you don't have an explanation of why, along the lines of, "34 white and 55 blue had been jawing at each other and I wanted to referee that matchup to make sure nothing happened." Just watching the players with no explanation isn't enough, it looks bad and it leaves your crew hanging out to dry.