I agree with this...and everybody else that basically had the same take. Looks like it's almost unanimous so far that having your partner explain your call is never a good idea. The calling official is the only official that should be commenting on a call.

I'm emailing this to tomegun. :eek:

You're a no good dirty rat. :)

That's good. It sounds like he (and you) handled things appropriately during the game. As for the discussion afterwards, unless he was telling you you screwed up or was being a jerk towards you, it was just his opinion. You can take it or leave it...personally, I would leave that advice behind because the Coach earned his T.

Why do we want to have secrets from our partners? If I issue a T on a player, my partners may not know why and the coach may not know why. It doesn't take a whole lot of time in our "post T conference" to go over the procedures involved and to add "Yeah 44 Blue told me he hadn't seen a call that bad since Jurassic did a game!;)" Now when my partner goes to the coach he can tell them what happened. What is wrong with that? It sounds a whole lot better, then telling the coach "I don't know". If I whach a coach, what is wrong with telling my partner why? I may have heard them say something, and they may have thought I "T'd" them for an action that THEY saw and I may have missed.
IMO, a key to good officiating is good communication. We communicate on everything else why make an exception for this? It should be more important in emotionally charged situations, which T's sometimes are. If I think that it was a 'soft' T I certainly wouldn't bring it up until we were in the locker room, and I would expect the same from my partner. Just like any other call.

Coach: "Snaqwells, why'd he give me a T?"
Me: "Coach, you'll have to ask Rocky when the game flow allows it."

All your partner needs to know (all I'd need to know), just as Rut indicates, is the kind of T given and to whom. I will inform the coach that he no longer gets to use the coaching box, then I'm watching the players on the court.

We don't communicate everything.

When you call A1 for a travel, do you tell your partner that he tried to do a jump stop and just couldn't do it right?

When you call B1 for a foul, do you tell your partner that he undercut the shooter?

When you call B2 for reaching across the plane, do you tell your partner exactly which limb crossed and for how long?

No, you don't. All your partner needs to know is what was called, not why.

In the case of a technical on a player, I will stay tableside after and if the coach wants an explanation, this will be the only time. Otherwise, if the coach receives a T from me, an explanation won't be given to anyone except my partner at halftime or after the game.

Ahem...thanks for deciding that I was the one who called the T. But since it was a three-person crew, it was actually Bhuck Elics that called the T, not me.

Fwiw, I agree with your main point here. I don't need to know what happened. If a coach asks me why my partner called a T, I will have a general idea - "Coach, he said something he shouldn't have.," or "Coach, you know what you did"...if Coach wants specifics, "Coach, here comes Bhuck. He'll give you all the details you could possibly want."

I have yet to see - in over 20 years of calling games - a T where the offending player/Coach really did not know what the T was for. Acting and theatrics aside, they know what they did.

Bhuck called the T? I figured he would have shrunk from the pressure.

+1

Judtech, I'm a big believer in communication, too, but ask yourself the purpose of the communication. In the case of a coach "T", Rocky said it best. You will typically get a "what's wrong with THAT comment?!" look, but ultimately, they know what's wrong.


And Snaq is right, too. We don't get explanations from our partners on 98% of the other calls. Why should a T be any different?

Let me throw something else in here, fwiw. For the most part, I agree in general that an explanation isn't necessary. But there may be some instances where a quick word to your partner may be necessary for crew unity in the case it really isn't clear to a lot of people why the T was given. If my partner is standing next to a coach, and that coach says something my partner feels is T-worthy, but not loud or obvious enough to others, I will want to know so I can be consistent to also give one if the same thing is said to me later. Maybe I might feel it was a quick trigger by my partner, but since they drew the line there, I will also enforce that line for the rest of the game. I seen many times where a coach will earn a T from official, but gets away with saying it again, and more, to the partners, because they didn't have the same threshold.

Usually, when my partner calls a T, I know the reason. However, there are those times when I'm down court or something similar and I don't know the reason. When that happens, most of the time I will just ask my partner "What happened?" After he tells me, I just nod and say "Oh, OK".

Whenever my partner asks me why I called a T, I usually say, "For the same reason I called the other seven so far this quarter." :D

I felt it was a great call on my part, but I respect his opinions and wanted to see what the general consensus on the board was in regards to my situation.

Now that I've been assured I was justified, I'm glad to know that I could finally bring Nevada and Rut together on an issue. I take full credit for bringing peace (however temporary) to this forum :D

There's not a damn thing wrong in telling your partner(s) what happened. BUT......

Your partner should NOT be going to a coach to explain YOUR call. EVER!! If a coach wants an explanation, he should get it from the calling official. That's what's wrong with that.

SNAQ, you know I love ya....BUT:D
Coach: "Snaqwells, why'd he give me a T?"
Me: "Coach, you'll have to ask Rocky when the game flow allows it."
Coach: "Then what the hell were you two talking about out there" or "Obviously you don't think I deserved it either"
I will agree that MOST coaches know exactly what they did.
I will also disagree about your foul analogy. When we call a foul we don't just raise our fist and say "Foul". We signify the player and what type of foul. We let them know if it was a push, hit or hold. There are those that even make a sweeping motion with their hands to emphasize the push or smack the side of the head to signify they got hit in the head. To me, no different than a "T". So my hypothetical situational conversation would be
Coach "Jud, why did she give me a T?"
Me: "Coach, you called her a bad name"
Coach "No I didn't"
Me: "Coach, it's what we heard. (HS) Now you are going to have to take a seat coach for the rest of the game" and walk away.
I usually do what Padgett does, and just ask if I don't know. However ,when I am the calling official, I also let the partner know. I'm just a big fan of keeping my partners informed. Not such a fan of keeping secrets. But that is just me.