Timeout situation

[slow whistle]

Originally Posted by Jurassic Referee

What doesthe number of TO's a team has left got to do with anything?

If you didn't know for sure that a head coach wanted a TO, whatintheheck were you doing granting him one in the first place? That's the question!

You screwed up. It happens. Learn from it and move on.

Agreed I totally screwed up and did learn from it as I said. IMO there is a gray area here - what are the approved "visual signals" (8-3) that a coach can use to signal TO? Is it just the "T"? Is it the "double foul" signal? Is it the "30-second timeout" signal? I think in regular situations we all grant timeouts based on any one of these without issue. The problem comes in in a situation like mine where you have what looks to be a "T" signal is claimed not to be by the coach. Would you have issued the technical? What if the signal he was giving at the time was his "T" signal, just slightly sloppy? To me this is where knowing how many time-outs are left is important. Agree with you by rule it doesn't matter in terms of whether or not to grant it, however, whether or not to grant the TO requires judgement, and knowing all of the pieces of the puzzle is important to exercise good judgement. Again, not to beat a dead horse, but I feel like officials are really hung out to dry by this rule.