Time-out, 4 return, when can 5th return?

[mbyron]

Originally Posted by Illini_Ref

You cannot discover that all eligible players didn't return to the floor until one comes in late. To do so would be guessing on who is injured, sick, has a uniform problem, blood problem, etc. If you call a technical because a kid is puking on the bench and didn't come out of a timeout, I think you are wrong. Now if he pukes, then runs in after the throw-in, whack him.

I can't? I think I can, because I can see when a team has just 4 players.

As I read this, it seems that you're trying to penalize the wrong infraction. By waiting until a player enters late, you're trying to penalize that player for returning late.

But the rule specifies penalizing the team for failing to return to together. That team technical foul is NOT charged to the player who returned late.

So if 4 are on the floor, I don't need to know which player is returning late or why. The team has committed an infraction by failing to return as a team, regardless of the reason.

If there's an issue such as illness or injury, we deal with that by following the rules concerning time-outs and substitutions, not by suspending other rules about returning to the floor.