Coach, I am sorry but I have been officiating longer than you have from what I understand. I do not use the term "automatic" because it takes out thought or judgment and it takes away from the situation. A kid could do less than that and get a T under the right circumstances. I know that you have convinced yourself this is "automatic" but I stopped using that way of thinking because I have found situations are not always that simple. What if that was the first time the kid had an outburst? What if the ball only went 6 feet in the air? What if the player tried to catch the ball? What if the ball hit him in the head? I am sorry, but I do not officiate that way anymore. It gets you in more trouble than it is worth if you ask me.

Peace

I would say it is the combination of the two things that makes this almost impossible to overlook.

Depends on what he's smokin', and if he brought enough to share with the rest of the class. :cool:

Mark, I don’t care what you’ve been told by your state government; it’s not medicine.

I did not say you overlooked it. I said it might not warrant a T. There are other ways to get players and coaches to stop behavior without calling a T. I do it all the time and it works most of the time without anyone noticing there was a problem in the first place.

Peace

Why do you think I moved to Oregon 37 years ago? Far out.

Coach, firstly you've added variables to the story since your opening post. Secondly, if someone disagrees with your premise of an automatic T in this situation is it going to change your mind or are you then going debate them in hopes that they change their mind?

The fact that he added elements suggests a couple of things to me. Either it did not happen quite the way he said or there was a little hyperbole to the situation.

Remember the officials on the game passed on the action. They obviously did not think it was "automatic." ;)

Peace

Doesn’t mean a T wasn’t warranted and missed. There could be any number of reasons it was passed on; some valid and some just, well, pusillanimous.

If a kid says "No way" and slams the ball on the floor so that it bounces 15 feet high, it warrants a T. I think people would notice this problem.

That is why I said the officials on the game passed for a reason. We might ultimately disagree with their reasoning or judgment, but we do not officiate behind a computer screen either.

Peace

And that will never heal if you pick at it.

I do not know about you, but I do not sit around the court with a measuring tape to know if the ball went 15 feet (which is hyperbole on some level) or 8 feet.

In the NCAA Finals, the ball went higher than 10 feet if you judge the ball going over the rim and nothing was called. And the officials were commended by many officiating observers for understanding the situation.

Also I would like to talk to the officials to know if they heard or did not hear the kid said. Once again, there is a reason they passed on a T and I frankly do not like taking the words of only one person that may or may not have been in a position to see or understand what the officials were doing or what they were not doing. And that is most of all why I like to stay away from the "automatic T" stuff.

Peace

2 scenarios:

(a) Kid gets called for a foul, he's obviously unhappy with the call, slams ball down, it bounces 15 feet high, he walks away. This earns a T from me.

(b) Close game, kid gets called for a foul, he knows he committed a dumb foul, he says "C'mon Smith!" (which is his name), he slams the ball down harder than he means to, he gets this "uh oh" look on his face, retrieves the ball and hands it to me. Probably no T here from me.

I suspect that (a) happens far more often than (b), but I agree with the general principle that technical fouls are almost never "automatic" but sometimes obvious and easy to call.

Assuming that it happened just as the OP said, including the height of the bounce, I'm almost certain to have a T. It's just business. If another official chooses to handle it differently during his game, fair enough.

Coach Bill, there's no way we can pass judgment on why the officials in your game didn't T the kid for this. Without even trying I can rattle off half a dozen reasons why they might not have called it. Not the least of which is that they didn't see the situation the same way you did.