Whistle for a sub?

[tomegun]

Originally Posted by RichMSN

I don't disagree with you. I am a firm believer that play-calling is 90% of the deal for officials and I spend most of my time worrying about getting the right position and the right look and the right philosophy to make proper decisions on the court.

That said, why can't officials focus on that *and* get the mechanics right, too?

Last summer I went to a camp where I was told up front that "this is a HS camp, we will use HS mechanics." I hadn't raised my hand 5 times in 3 years before pointing a direction and still got some darned good assignments. I took it as a challenge (and I didn't want to be noticed for something so silly) and didn't miss a single "stop clock" the entire weekend and was *still* noticed (in a positive way) for my play calling.

So while I'm not against what you say, I'll ask again -- why can't officials do both?

In a perfect world they can, but either I have the worst luck or high school officials can't do both (half serious, half kidding). Let me ask you this, would you ding an official who looks good, but doesn't use mechanics by the book versus an official who uses sloppy mechanics by the book?

I failed to mention, Las Vegas has always been a liberal area when it comes to mechanics. I started years ago in phoenix and we had to do everything precisely by the book. That actually helped me when I got to Vegas - I had fundamentally sound mechanics to start with.