I wish it did, but fortunately (or unfortunately) there have been enough coaches trying to make the game fair to require a case play, and not enough coaches benching players for discipline to require a case play. ;)

Again agree. If a player is benched, he/she is not <b>available</b> <i>per se</i>. The current rules language does not explicitly cover these cases.

Simmons is usually pretty good. He gets really caught up in NBA stuff, but besides that I read his stuff every week.

100% Agreement
 

From Jurassic Referee: "When I started out in '59, all TO's had to be requested by a player on the floor. Coach's couldn't request them. They should go back to something like that too. Maybe only allow coaches to request TO's during a dead ball. Allowing a head coach to request live-ball TO's causes nothing but headaches imo. Terrible rule."

Jurassic Referee: I agree 100% !!!!

Interesting! Suppose the coach said to the official, "This person is not available as a player", while the player himself said, "Yes I am"? Come to think of if, what if the player added, "And he's not our coach!"?

Actually we could go far beyond that. Suppose officials come to administer a game at a certain place & time between teams A & B. At the appointed time, team B shows up, as does team A and team A' -- that is, two groups, each claiming to be one of the teams that are supposed to play. What do you do? Seems like a similar situation to the one above, just on a larger scale.

Robert

If this is late in the game, then the coach's authority has been established and the player's statement is going to be ignored. If anything, it will solidify my position that the coach can suspend this player if he so chooses.
And really, who are we to say a player can't be suspended effective in the middle of the game?

My head hurts.

If the player's name is one that was submitted to the scorer prior to the start, then he is not suspended for that contest.

http://www.runemasterstudios.com/gra...s/banghead.gif



I love that gif!

Rules citation to back that comment up?

The player obviously has a concussion. Or he will soon when the coach is finished with him for saying he's available when he's been benched.

why do so many officials want to or try to get involved in team/internal matters that have nothing to do with their duties as officials

now if we were officials/mind readers then we could judge but why get involved in team issues. Coach says he cant play, I am NOT going to do my best impersonation of Sherlock Holmes to ascertain if the coach has a valid excuse or not. I would mention to the coach the rule that a coach cannot do this for fair play and then move on.

however we can leave it to Nevada to interpet the word "so" on line 3 of any given rule. sometimes what is written means exactly what it says.

Wrong...you don't get to decide that. That kid could have mouthed off to the coach in the huddle or at halftime in the locker room and the coach has decided the kid is done for the night...if the coach says he/she isn't available, you don't get to disagree with them!

We went over this about a year or two ago, and I could swear Jurrassic was adamant in his view that the player must play unless clearly injured (or otherwise incapacitated). It could have been another poster, but its interesting to see we agree on at least ONE thing!! Maybe he'll change his view now that he sees I agree with him.

Anyway, the scenario presented then was that a coach told the official that player X would not be participating in the rest of the game and was going to be off the team after the game, or something similar, due to an attitude problem. Some here insisted that he must still play if required to fill out 5 on the floor, but I strongly disagree. He isn't "available," per what the coach says.

However, if you are in this situation, you need go to the scorer and say, "player A12 is unavailable, so he won't be re-entering the game at any point." If a coach is going to deem a player unavailable for a non-injury type situation, then he's done. Otherwise, he is exploiting the rules for his advantage and we can't allow that.

Ok, but the kid's not coming in later during OT after being "reinstated", right? Once the coach says he's unavailable, he's unavailable for the rest of the game?