Advantage/Disadvantage

[CMHCoachNRef]

Originally Posted by Snaqwells

I agree, I don't use the term "A/D" with coaches. Then again, I haven't had to explain much to coaches when I pass on most of these. "Coach, your guy beat him anyway and got a wide open shot." That works, but they normally understand this anyway.

And yes, there is some disagreement on how to apply it, but I think you'd find it's more a matter of semantics here than an actual difference on the court.

Even my disagreement, in this thread, with jar falls into the semantics category, I think. I doubt he'd call it much differently than I would.

The fact is, applying A/D takes time and games to get right; and there is a progression among officials when learning it. But in the end, it leads to greater consistency rather than less. We cannot call every contact a foul, so A/D provides a more consistent basis for distinguishing.

Largely Agree. I have a very good friend who has been a basketball coach for over 20 years. I have coached against him for much of that time. He frequently gets upset with officials. When he gets irritated with officials, he will tell me, "ALL I am looking for is consistency."

The inconsistency, in my opinion, is largely due to a couple of factors. First of all, inexperience. It takes a great deal of time to become consistent as an official -- and none of us will ever be perfect in this area. I feel that this is the toughest part of officiating is consistently making each call during a quarter, during a game, and during a season. The second factor is a large variance within the way officials call a game. In other words, as individuals, we are calling a consistent game, but as a "crew" we are not consistent since one is calling a tighter game than the other. I now largely work with a couple of different crews. In each case, we call a similar game. When I work games with "blind dates", it is more likely that we will be inconsistent -- not because we are individually inconsistent, but because we apply advantage/disadvantage differently during a game.