Official's time out

[Brad]

This is definitely something that you do not want to make a habit out of. I can't ever think of a situation where I would stop live play to explain a call. If play is already stopped and we have a very unusual situation, I might take some extra time to explain a call / ruling to the coaches. However, in general you do not want to do this.

The only time that we should really have an "official's time-out" is for an injury.

I did hear a story once of Don Rutledge stopping a game because there was so much rough play at the beginning of the game. He called a time-out, told the teams to go to their benches and to come back on the floor with a new game.

Of course, the vast majority of us are not Don Rutledge and could not get away with that! However, for him, in that situation, it worked!