Vintage NBA questions

[Old School]

I too recall seeing games in the 70's with 3 officials.

There is a couple of situations in the NBA where a shooter will get one FT. One is on a technical foul and the other is some weird incident that I will have to look up. We actually did it in a game I was working using NBA rules and I had no idea what the hell they where doing.

[Mark Padgett]

Back in the day, an "off ball" foul was one free throw. This was why you saw Wilt Chamberlain getting fouled off ball all the time. Since Wilt started out as such a terrible FT shooter, fouling him off ball and getting the rebound when he missed the FT was almost like forcing a turnover by the defense. This is another case of a rule change being made because of a certain player's ability or inability as the game evolved (think "lane widening", etc.).