Is this common in your neck of the woods?
 

A conversation I've had with fellow officials is about wether we should tell players how much time is left on the shot clock. Now I know many of you do not use a shot clock. But for those who do, do you advise the players the amount of time left before a throw-in? I don't believe we should but some of my partners do it. Today, I'm doing a game and we have a throw-in with 4 seconds left, I show my partner four fingers. He seems to take this as a reason to loudly announce that "There are four seconds on the shot clock". Now he did three of four times during the game so it was consistent for both sides but to me if a team is unaware of a game situation that's their problem.

I don't comment on shot or game clock time to any player or comment. In "these here parts" we will try to get our partner's attention and communicate (non verbal) that time is short on the shot clock. (Chest tap, wrist tap, nod to the clock etc.) UNLESS, there is a time out, then it is just easier to talk to your partners.
Hope that helps.

In NYC, some of our pro-am games do not have a physical shot clock (but do have the shot clock rule) so we keep it ourselves using the game clock -- in this case, we announce at all inbounds, 10, 5 and countdown from 3.

In our officiating zone our head officials ask us to announce anything under 10 on dead ball (throw in). They're rational is it will help avoid game interruption because a team wasn't aware.

Why should it be the official's responsibility to tell a team how much time is left on a shot clock? Here officials may give the violation signal or some other if time is close to tell each other but not tell teams. However that is the responsibility of either coaching staff or players to know the clock!

This just seems weird. "game interruption?" So they teach you to coach the players out of a violation? Might as well do your 5 second inbound count out loud.

I do see that their is a bit of a difference here.

Telling the players about the status of the game is a bit different than telling them they're getting close to an infraction. I don't think it is quite the same as "Hey, watch out, you're getting close to the OOB line" or "Hey, remember, you've already dribbled".

It is more like..."You can run the line" or "Spot throw-in". They should also know which of those it is but we do tell them that. I don't see that it would be much different to say, there are 5 seconds on the clock (to both teams).

Of course, we don't do it that way, but I could see the reasoning.

I see your point with the spot vs end line throwin, but I do think it's closer to the 5 second throwin call. They're both time limits the players and teams should be aware of.Then again, I've only worked one game with a shot clock, so it's not something I'm overly familiar with.

Warning, Warning, Will Robinson ...
 

How about the infamous, "Get out of the lane"?

During critical throw-ins in the NBA, the officials will sometimes verbally give the counts (The whole count). I'm not sure how often they do it, but they do.

Also, I was at a local rules clinic, and one of the officials there, who does D-III games told us to give the first second of the five second count (I guess this was so they could gauge how fast we were counting?).

Really? Sounds like the TX tradition of the officials hitting the whistle as they take the court so the players know it's time to stop dunking. Purely local/regional, and something I've never heard of anyone else doing. If your local powers want that done, ok. If, however, it's some guy who just started getting some D-III games passing something he heard from someone that one time at band camp, I'd ignore it.

Yeah, I was watching a special on NBA TV where the profiled the officials. On almost every inbounds that was shown in the piece, the official was verbalizing the 5 second count along with the hand count.

I think it's just an NBA thing. I've never actually done it during any of my games, but I've always remembered him saying to do it.

I don't know enough about NBA mechanics to doubt you; there are others here that work NBA mechanics regularly (BTaylor) and would know one way or the other. I was surprised someone told you to do it at the high school level, to be honest.

I'm by no means saying that it is a proper mechanic. I'm just saying that I've seen it done. If not for the special, I never would have known that they even sometimes do it. You never can tell when you watch games on TV, and I've never been to an NBA game, so I don't know. Maybe I'll go and see a game one of these days, and maybe then I can find out for sure.

If you're doing high school games, don't do it.

NFHS rule 2-7-9.