AT&T to the rescue!!!
 

Just a little vent...


BV game, I'm trail, opposite table. Home A1 dribbles into a trap just over the division line about 10 off the sideline. Visiting B1 and B2 doing a great job with the trap when B1 swats at the ball AND gets the ball knocking it out of A1's hands. A1, having quick hands recovers the ball very quickly....just inches out of his hands.....never hitting the floor. A1, presumably being an intelligent player, knows he can now dribble again and does so to escape the trap. He splits the defenders and about 2-3 steps later with B's fans screaming, there is a whistle from the baseline.....illegal dribble. :eek:

I look up in shock at my partner...wondering what he was thinking. He had both B1 and B2 blocking his view of the interior of the trap and couldn't possibly have seen the play. We come together to talk about it and I inform him that the defender knocked the ball out of A1's hands and that A1 got a new dribble as a result. He says that "since the ball didn't hit the floor, A1 can't dribble again". I informed him that there is no such requirement but he insists on sticking with his call...making me look like an idiot (for missing a double dribble right in front of me) and he gets the rule wrong at the same time!!! Even if I HAD missed an illegal dribble in that situation, there is no way he should have come in with that call.

This really ticked me off since he made the call from ~50ft away AND didn't know the rule either.

Did you ask him who was covering his area since he obviously had yours covered? After I asked him this I would tell him I can call my own violations w/o his help.

Must have been a new partner.
<HR>
Trust your partner (if he's in his own area).

Was he the R? Not that it matters in this case, just sometimes interesting to see how this impacts things..

Why do you ask ?
If you were the Referee would you reverse your partners' calls ?

Somehow I don't think Camron gets upstaged very often due to being the U. I'm pretty sure he can hold his own with any partner. ;)

I think kbilla was more curious about whether this particular partner had some overinflated sense of self-importance due to being the R on this particular game.

OK, you just quoted where I said "not that it matters" then you ask a question like this? NO I would not reverse/override one of my partner's calls as R, I asked b/c as we have all seen some officials DO think that if they are R they have the right and/or responsibility to do this...as I said just interesting to see how it plays into the situation...

I would like to know what happened after the game, at halftime or whenever this play was discussed. Something like this would make my conversation be very direct. Hopefully, your partner apologized at the first opportunity. Otherwise I would directly address why he is calling out of his area so far. I would also discuss the rule that he blew.
Try to use the following to explain it to him: What if B1 knocked the ball twenty feet in the air, twenty feet away from the original play and A1 somehow got to the ball before it hit the ground? Or, what if B1 hit the ball, the ball comes loose, B1 touches it again and then A1 secures it before the ball touches the ground?

The dribble ends when the ball touches or is touched by an opponent and cases the dribbler to lose control.
A player shall not dribble a second time after his/her first dribble has ended, unless it is after he/she has lost control because of: art 2...a touch by an opponent.

Hit him with that right quick.

Cute.

At this point it would be really hard for me to not tell him that I got this one, just trust me pard then blow the whistle declare an inadvertent whistle and give the ball back to A.

I agree. I would have reversed his call. I may have even done so without talking with him. Sometimes this is the only way that someone like that will learn.

Just stand out there at midcourt, blow the whistle a couple of times and wave your hands, then loudly announce that the defender knocked the ball loose and that it is still white's ball. Then administer the throw-in right there. :D

Thanks Snaqs...

And as much as we all joke about what we would do, your partner really blew it in this case and his refusal to back down only made things worse. You handled it as best you could by letting the play go as called rather than getting into an argument with him at midcourt...that said, as others have said there would be some fireworks at halftime!

Since I had already said pretty much everything that could be said on the court, I didn't see any point in bringing it up again. He heard my statement of what happened and the rule. I had no need to "prove I was right" or get him to admit he was wrong.
No apology nor any concession of error. Didn't see that pushing for it would improve anything. Sometimes, it is better to just drop it and vent elsewhere so others can perhaps learn from it.

Tough one Cam...

My first reaction was why in the heck was he, as lead, watching the trap at the division line....and who was watching the other seven players? Yeah, it happens occasionally at lower levels with newer officials, but it's definitely not something I'd expect to see at a BV game.

You were 100% right and your partner blew it big time IMHO. He must have either missed the rules meeting...or slept through it. I know the commissioner covered it, as it was one of this year's rules revisions(4-15-4d, 9-5-2). The ball doesn't even have to be intentionally batted by the oponent - only requirement is that control was lost by ball contacting the opponent......and there's nothing in there about it hitting the floor either.

I'm assuming the coach didn't know the rule as well. :rolleyes:

Coach didn't have to know the rule, because "with B's fans screaming", he and Camron's partner knew all they had to know.:(

You dropped it and now he could do the same things: blow a rule and continue to call all over the court. How will that help the game?
It is probably just me, but doing what is right is not always easy. He needs to know he screwed up so he doesn't continue to screw up games. Your association's reputation is at stake, the integrity of the game is at stake and the integrity of every crew he is a part of is at stake. Who said part of being a good partner is only telling officials what they want to hear?

You could have least said, "You're not getting any of my check so you might as well let me call in my area and earn it."

Sounds to me like that was made clear on the court and rehashing it postgame would only have led to worse things.

Tom,
I happen to personally agree with you, but have also found that most HS officials don't want to hear it and that most HS associations frown upon their officials criticizing each other in that manner. If the association has an evaluator or commissioner, it is his job to handle the instruction and compliance. The assignor has the power to take away games or to adjust the level of the games for this kind of behavior both for the official who is screwing up the game and the official who berates his partner.

It would be better if it worked the way that you say, but I've learned otherwise and sadly believe that most HS officials aren't held to that standard.

This action would never occur to me, so I need to clarify exactly how it would go. I'll salt it away for future use, after I'm sure I understand what you're saying.

Game progressing. Kid trapped as per OP. Ball bounces around, A1 dribbles out of trap, partner at endline blows whistle,**

do you give him time to signal? THen what?

You trot down to meet him, lean in and quietly say..... what? "You screwed the pooch, pard. Call it an IW, and I"ll get the ball back in a hurry."

Or just yell down to him, "I got it pard!!" Then, "Coach, it was an IW, we're giving it back to A. Here we go" and hustle off. Isn't that overriding the partner? Which is never okay?

I think I would have hit the whistle, run over to him and said "Hey, that ball got knocked out of his hands by the defender, so his second dribble was legal. You couldn't see that from where you were at, so I've got this one for you." Then simply turned to the table/coaches and signalled it was A's ball - if coach wants an explanation, I'd give him the same thing I told my partner...

No long discussion with him/her. No argument about the rule...just step in, state what you've got and put the ball in play. If they want to rehash it after the game, great - I'll let them know exactly what I thought of that call and them making it from where they were at. This is one of those times where protecting the game is more important than worrying about hurting my partners feelings.

Seems to me Camron's partner was the one doing the over riding on this play. All I'm suggesting is I wouldn't let him do that.

Says who???

I'm just thinking about all the advice to go quietly to the partner, give information and let the partner decide whether or not to change the call. I think you're saying that when I'm 100% sure that the partner just jumped under the train and pulled me with him, I can "fix" it for the good of the game, if I do it correctly. Would you say that's appropriate once a season or less? Shouldn't be undertaken lightly? Absolutely not for the faint of heart?

I would say "yes" to all of your questions. Hopefully it never happens, but if it does, why let the partner screw it up and just stand there? Absolutely not to be taken lightly, but I would rather have my partner be mad at me than the assignor/supervisor who calls and asks "Why didn't you handle this?"

Hopefully you don't have to do another game with this guy. If you do, be the R, the whole pregame discuss only Rule 4-15, and PCA!

It wasn't made clear, or clear enough, if the call stayed the way it was. Rocky says some good stuff in a post above; protect the game. The wrong call was made by the wrong person because the calling official had no business calling it anyway. This wasn't a game saving play, a play that was obviously missed or a non-basketball play. Using verbage like that and getting an official to understand it keeps these situations from becoming a common occurance.
Sure, just leaving the gym will keep you out of harm's way, maybe only temporarily, but what about the game? I may be describing it in a more harsh way than it would actually be. I don't see nothing wrong with solving a rule dispute at the appropriate time. Blowing rules is how many of us have learned (the hard way).

I did, at the spot, tell him what the rule was. He understood what I was saying....just unwilling to overturn his call.

And note that this was the ONLY incident of him calling in my primary. He is NOT typically a ball watcher....but just once is all it takes to get one wrong....backing up the NBA's claims that calling out of your primary tends to be wrong far more than right.

Now that's an interesting take. I have never considered that angle. I think the ability to pull that tactic off would depend on the partner. Not sure that it would have worked well on this one. Plus, I was a bit stunned at the call, it sort of froze me for a few seconds. It threw me for such a loop that I didn't fell I was "in the game" or 2-3 more trips up and down the court.

Camron, I"m dying to know who it was. And I"m on leave of absence this year, so I'll never tell anyone else. Won't even SEE anyone else. Couldn't you e-mail me and let me know?

Nope. Some things are OK to share, when you know they're OK with it...funny stuff. Knowing that people from this area do read this, I purposefully left out the day, date, teams, etc. so that it would not be possible to figure it out from what I wrote. The guy calls a really good game and did call a really good game that game (except for that one call).

I did, however, find out that he asked the commissioner (also our state rules interpreter) about it later and was told what the rule should have been. That point only came up when the commissioner asked how my game went and I asked if he'd seen my situation I posted here and he realized it was the same situation.

Doggone it, Camron, why do you have to be so ethical. And Howard's still reading, huh?

Hi, Howard...

Alright people, move along. Nothing more to see here. :P