Free throw count

[soundedlikeastrike]

Originally Posted by BillyMac

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?

I don't know one official from another, lead, who's supposed to be counting etc. The official that was counting and motioning was the official on the baseline that gave me the ball. This was a 3 man crew, one on the baseline, one two my right near 1/2 court, one near the scorers table.
When the horn and second whistle was heard, I flicked the ball towards the baseline official, with an underhand two bounce type motion, the official did not ask for the ball back, it was just reactionary on my part, horn, whistle, I know (or felt) I gotta let the official have the ball.