Free throw count

[BillyMac]

Originally Posted by soundedlikeastrike

I get fouled while shooting, going to the line for 2. I receive the ball from the official, start my 3 bounce ritual, which consists of, finding the air inlet, I then dribble once, twice, on the 3rd dribble, the inlet has come *360, goes between my index and middle fingers, and splash, about a 4-5 sec. routine. On my first dribble, one of my teammates enters the lane. The side official tweets and rules a lane violation. I toss the ball back to the baseline official, he's say's, 1 shot and tosses the ball back to me. I get 1 bounce in, when the horn sounds and the 3rd official tweets in a sub, I look over and the side ref see's there really is no sub and makes a go ahead type motion. I toss the ball back to the baseline official, who steps in the lane bat's the ball back towards me, steps back and in a counting motion say's "7, 8". I can't believe my eyes nor ears, and can't remember how long a player has to shoot a FT, but I'm thinking, he's thinking 10 seconds, so I catch and quickly flick one towards the hoop, ruin my perfect FT string on the year. Just wondering where this guy was coming from?

Some quick observations.

By rule, a free throw shooter has ten seconds to shoot the ball after he has the ball at his disposal.

Officials are not required, and, in fact, not supposed to verbally call out numbers while counting three seconds, five seconds, or ten seconds. Five seconds, and ten seconds, require some type of hand, or arm, counting motion. Three seconds doesn't require any type of hand, or arm count.

Since there was no violation called there was really no way for the two other officals to know what happened in this situation. I'm sure that if the "counting" official had called a ten second violation before your shot, that the lead offcial would have had a quick "pow wow" with his partner.

My guess is that the "counting" official didn't see you toss the ball back to the lead official, and kept counting. I wonder? Did the lead official ask you to toss the ball back to him a second time?