The Toughest Calls in Basketball

[Old School]

Originally Posted by Junker

For me personally, the toughest call is granting a time out. I've been bitten a couple times in my career on this one. Last year, in a close varsty girls game, I'm bringing the ball up as T with a 1 on 1 match up in front of me. I think I hear "time out" from the bench. When I finally have a point where I can look at the coach, he's just standing there. I ask if he wants a time out, he says yes, and as I'm getting the whistle back in my mouth, we have a steal going the other way. Next time down he got his time out, but needed part of it to have a discussion with me. It was his own fault for not being more visible or llouder so my partners could pick it up, but it was still a not great situation.

Though I don't always remember to do this. I try to tell the coaches to give me the TO signal or 30 - Full when I look at you in the pregame. In a close game you got to keep yelling it and calling it. If I'm sure the coach called a TO and when i checked, he/she confirmed it. I go back to where the ball was when the coach asked for the TO.

A side note to this is at a recent game. I had a coach turn around and kick his chair after the opposition scored a 3 point goal. I immediately bang him with a T, giving the T signal. Opposition coach thought I called a TO and his players rushed the court to congradulate their teammate. I'm trail 2 person and report the T to the table. I go to ask the opposition coach who going to shoot the T and his entire bench is at half-court. I ask the coach, did you call a TO? He said no, you did. No, I called a Technical foul. Coach: but you gave the timeout signal. Okay, I'm going to give your bench a technical foul for being on the court. So what turned out to be a potential 5 - 6 - 7 - 8 point swing in their favor. I made it a double technical, we don't shoot, POI, both coaches seat belted. Man was that coach mad....