and who cares if they are

Even if you call a foul that does not mean someone still would not be hurt on the play. One of the biggest myths in sports is if the official calls something you will prevent someone from being hurt. Someone always gets hurt in sports even when you call something on a play. You should not take this to heart. You should not take this to heart.

Peace

Warn and wack. I hate the flopping thing. It was big several years ago and I had no problem giving a T for this. The majority of the time its in the lane and under the basket. Not a basketball play and unsafe.

These two things make me think this may not be true. After the game is over there's no reason to engage in a "stare-down competition" with anyone, especially a coach. Swallow any pride that may be telling you otherwise and get to the locker room. Be the bigger man. Staring back is engaging in the same bad conduct.

If you can't get past these situations without "winning," then maybe you aren't emotionally ready for basketball officiating.

There's no way a coach could get into a post-game stare down with me. He'll be looking at the back of my head as I get off the court. I wouldn't even know if he tried.

Just by engaging with him here, you lost.

+1

I Have A Pair Of Bite Me Socks ...
 

We were wondering why you had, "Bite Me", shaved into the back of your head. Nice haircut for an official.

I've been saying this for years. I defy anyone to show me how a call or non-call would cause or prevent an injury. The myth in basketball is that if you don't call more fouls, the contact becomes harder or is increased. That's bull. The roughest games I've had were the ones where a bunch of fouls were called. But even then, I'd argue that one thing has nothing to do with the other. The game is going to be well played, or ugly, and that's determined by the two teams playing.

If the argument is that teams don't like the calls and get out of control, how am I supposed to respond if I believe the calls or non-calls made are correct? Make calls that I think aren't correct?

I had a coach in football tell me in pregame that he was deathly afraid of injuries to his kids. I said, "fine; I guarantee you my guys won't hurt them. Other than that, I'm not sure what I can do about it. Most injuries happen on legal plays. For the ones that happen on illegal plays, the flag isn't going to heal the injury, so the only real question becomes whether we make the correct call or not. I can assure you our goal tonight will be to get the calls correct, but I can't make any assurances about injuries on anyone' part -- your players, your opponents, or even you and I."

He seemed a bit annoyed, but I didn't really leave him with anything to argue about. I was very annoyed that he thinks officials have something to do with preventing injuries. In fact its one of my pet peeves (if you can't already tell)!

While I agree with everyone that in general calls (or no-calls) don't cause injuries, there are a few things we CAN do to potentially help prevent them. They are all non-basketball type plays. We can call a violation for swinging elbows the first time it happens and not wait for blood and teeth to attempt to stop the action. We can penalize unsporting conduct when it happens, which may prevent it from escalating into physical conduct. We can penalize intentional fouls when they are committed in late-game fouling and not allow the conduct to escalate.

Again, never are officials to blame for injuries. However, we can penalize conduct to reduce the chances of non-basketball plays escalating into actions that cause injuries.