My story is similar....My first or second year as an official, I'm doing some Saturday afternoon games at the local Boys and Girls Club league. We have a time out and I am talking with the club director about something or the other. Time out ends and I yell some final comments to him as I retreat to my postion as lead on the baseline. Ball is put in play, Team A is passing the ball looking for an opening, team A player drives to the hole and is fouled going up, not hammered, but enough to make the call. My fist goes up and I blow some air....and nobody stops playing....shot is missed, team B rebounds and is off to the other end when I realize that my whistle is hanging around my neck...Oh well...off to the other end. Nobody says a word about the "missed" foul.

In my case, I was the R and had to toss the jump ball. Drive went directly to the basket on my side of the court. As T, I had the foul call. Did the fist, blew out, did the whole thing; except that I never put the whistle back in my mouth after the toss. :(

Have had two unusual situations.

Twice in one game a kick happens right in front of me and I spit out the whistle and shout "KICK!" Then I have to find my whistle and blow it. Have no idea why this happened. Never happened any other time.

JVB early this season, only a few seconds remaining in a 1 point game. H is pressing and ties up the ball in back court. I blow my whistle and signal jump ball. Suddenly my partner comes across the floor tweet-tweeting. V coach had requested a time out. But my partner had not entirely broken the football habit of not having his whistle in his mouth. We granted the TO, but H coach wasn't happy about it.

I think I shared this earlier, but here's mine:

It's my first year this year: JHB, I'm administering a throw-in after a timeout. Defender breaks the plane of the OOB line and whacks the thrower on the arm. I get my fist up and go to blow the whistle and....pthuh. No sound except my whistle banging against my shirt. My partner blew his whistle for it, chuckling down the court as he reported it. Coach asked why he was making that (obvious) call from so far away; you could her the slap from a mile away.:rolleyes:

SI Cover ???
 

First a thread appears about spitting out a whistle, and then it happens to me last night.

Girls varsity game. Four minutes left. White is down by about ten points. White coach takes a time out, probably to tell her players to foul Blue, to stop the clock. Blue brings ball into the front court in my primary, and White reaches in, slapping Blue on the wrist. I try to blow my whistle to call a common foul, but I spit out my whistle, the first time that I can remember doing that in many, many, many, years, although it might have something to do with a recent change from several years of using the Mini Fox whistle to now using the regular Fox 40 whistle. White "hacks" on Blue's wrist at least twice more before I have time to get the whistle in my mouth to blow it for the common foul. The Blue player looks at me like "Why are you letting them beat me up?" and I explain to her that I split my whistle out and couldn't blow it fast enough to stop the additional fouls. She nods and smiles at me.

Here's the kicker. On the next Blue possession, White must have figured out that they "really" have to foul Blue for me to blow my whistle, so White grabs Blue by the jersey. Other than reaching across a boundary to foul an inbounder, there are only a few "automatic" intentional fouls that I call, the "bear hug" foul, the "grabbing the jersey" foul, and the "two handed push from behind" foul, because these are not "basketball plays", so I call an intentional foul on White. The White coach doesn't like my call, and I felt badly because I'm sure that the intentional foul wouldn't have occurred if I had not spit out my whistle on the first foul, but intentional was the call.

My partner said that I could have passed on the intentional, knowing that I was partly to blame. Comments?

In this case, I'd agree with your partner.

I don't. The kid made a poor play. Call the intentional foul.

Partner's off base. The jersey grab is easy. Coach may not like it, but they agree with it (quietly, of course). Have someone grab his player's jersey and see what call he asks for.

Agreed -- but an explanation to White about the spit whistle, and / or a reminder to "keep making basketball plays" could help prevent the intentional foul (if they thought they "had" to do so based on the previous late whistle)

Case in point:

It happens. It would have been better had the players learned when to call TO. But these are HS varsity kids.

this is the first year of fiba for me after many years of ncaa and nfhs reffing. I cannot tell you how much easier it is to have the fiba rule that timeouts must be requested through the scorers table and then granted at the next whistle after notifying the ref by sounding the horn (like subs). All this silliness that coaches and players get involved with (falling/leaping out of bounds, no control, can't hear the requests...etc.) asking for a timeout has been eliminated. I love it, and it makes the game outcome more centered on the players rather than a coaching call. Interesting that most of the FIBA rules have this overriding principle: the players shall determine the outcome of the game (not refs, coaches or spectators) and the rules are built on this simple principle.