Ignoring the DOG (no - not when he has to go outside) :)

[Mark Padgett]

I was talking with a fellow official the other day and he said he had a situation that came up and he wondered if he did the right thing. NF rules - team A scores a basket really late in a close game and now trails by 3. B1 takes the ball OOB to inbound with 4 seconds left. Team A is out of timeouts. B1 is just going to stand there and let the clock run out. A1 reaches over the line to get a DOG warning and stop the clock. We all know the rule states we are to ignore this if, in our opinion, that's the purpose of the action. My friend said he knew team A already had one DOG and this would have been their second, which would result in a technical. He ignored it and the clock ran out.

He left the court before coach A could yell at him for not calling it. He thought that since it would have given team B two shots and the ball back, maybe he should have called it, since (in his opinion - I disagreed) calling the technical would have given team B more of an advantage in winning the game.

I asked him how calling the T could possibly resulted in more of an advantage for team B than just letting the clock run out and therefore winning the game? He just shrugged.

My question is - can you think of any situation in which you wouldn't ignore the DOG in that type of situation?

BTW - I remembered a game many years ago when, in a very similar situation, team A requested a timeout, knowing they were out of them just to stop the clock. They figured there was at least a sliver of a chance that team B would miss their free throws on the T and perhaps allow team A to steal the inbound pass. I guess they could also have committed an intentional foul and taken the same chance.