Intentional or excessive intentional

[Judtech]

Originally Posted by Nevadaref

I want to thank both of you for your thoughts. We seem to be in agreement that the C simply taking this call from the L is not the right thing to do, even if the C has it as intentional and the L does not. (Sidenote: Would we feel the same way if the C thought it was flagrant?)

Therefore, I feel good about not immediately making this call over in my partner's area. The last little thing which I have been pondering is should I also have gone over and attempted to persuade the L to go with the X along with the T. Let me state exactly what I was thinking on the court and you guys can comment, but first allow me to write that I have all of the respect in the world for the official who was the T on this play. He is a former D1 mens official and I have worked with him on a couple of occasions with nothing but the best results. So despite his positioning deep in the backcourt (perhaps FT line extended), he viewed the foul with similar thoughts to mine. [And yes, probably at the expense of not closely watching the other eight players back there with him.]

Now right as the foul occurs, I think, "Oh, that was excessive." Then I progressed to other thoughts such as: Does he have it? Ok, he's got the call, but I don't know if he is calling intentional or not because he is from somewhere else and I am not familiar with his mechanics. Perhaps he doesn't know to use the crossed arms signal or maybe they don't do that in his area. I'll make sure that the players are okay and that nothing further happens. [They get up without incident.] Now just as I consider going over and asking the L if he has that as intentional, I see the T come down to speak with him as he is heading to table and they meet at the 28 foot line, so I think, "Okay, [name deleted] has this." I can hear the entire conversation while standing on the other side of the FT lane and keeping an eye on the players. He says almost exactly what I would have said, so I stay where I am. Once I understood that the L was not going to upgrade to intentional, I didn't really think that I could lend any more to the situation than the T already did. At that point I wasn't going to chase him to the table and further hold up the proceedings. I just let it go and moved on. He had already conversed with one of his partners. It never occurred to me that he wouldn't accept information from this guy because he was the T at the time, but would from me because I happened to be the C. I seriously doubt that crossed the mind of the calling official either.
I viewed the T as a very strong official and felt that the message had been delivered loud and clear.

On the other hand, I can't help but think that if all three of us had gotten together that while it would have been obvious to everyone in the building that the two of us were attempting to alter his decision, and from that perspective I doubt that would have been a good thing for the rest of the game, it is entirely possible that the two of us combined would have been successful in getting the final decision to be an intentional foul.

So the big question is would it have been worth it from a credibility standpoint as well as risking this partner going into the tank for the remainder of the game just to reward the shooting team with one more possession?

While I don't believe that the absolute correct call was made on this particular play, perhaps a few good calls later in the game were made by this individual solely because he had the confidence that his partners will willing to support him and trust him to make calls in his area. In the end, that may have had more impact upon the game.

The next time you post something this long, could you include pictures? It is much easier for me that way. The books I usually read have lots of them. Sometimes there are even pages for me to use my crayons!!