Free throw count
 

Had a goofy one the other night. HS rules, adult league.
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?
Questions:
1. How long does a shooter have on a FT?
2. Could this have been handled any worse by the BLO?
3. Could have/should have another official intervened?
4. Am I just hosed up thinking I was violated in some way?

Counting Crows ???
 

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.

Most times if you read any other posts officials will give you a little leeway. 11 sec-12sec. Probabaly worn you to watch your time. Most freethrows never get to 7 sec anyways. In your situation, horn sounded thinking there was a substitution, I would have given you a new count. It was adult league rec ball after all.

I would have started a new count at any level.

"Seven. Eight. Nine." Is A No No ...
 

It really doesn't matter what level of play it was. Once the lead handles the ball after the substitution, or non substitution, horn, there should have been a new count, anywhere from third graders up to the the NCAA, the NBA, and the Olympics. Again, my best guess here is that the counting official was distracted by the horn for the substitution, or non substitution, and did not see the ball get passed from the shooter, to the lead, back to the shooter, which should have started a new count at any level. This error I can understand, however, I can't understand this error: There is absolutely no excuse for the counting official to verbally count. This can be distracting, and disconcerting, to any shooter.

There are so many problems with this it's not even funny.
1. When the whistle blows, and it did, the ball becomes dead and should be readministered.
2. Once the lead official had it, it was readministered, so the count should have started over.
3. The official who does the count in this play was the LEAD. So:

a. He can't say he didn't know the ball was dead.
b. He never should have had that count to begin with.