Quite the oddness

[Scrapper1]

This actually happened in an NBA All-Star game back in the '80s. I won't remember it exactly right, but I think the West was up big in the last minute of the game and an East player stole the ball and made a big dunk. So Magic (I think) took the ball out of bounds and passed it right back to the East player, who again dunked it. And Magic again threw the throw-in right to the East player. Wish I could remember it more exactly. . .

[WhistlesAndStripes]

OK, first off, I forgot to mention the reason I called them "Home" and "Visiting" is because it was a preseason tourney and neither school involved was the host school.

To continue the story, here's how it played out:

After the second occurrence, V was fouled going up for a shot and my partner called the foul from the lead position. He headed up to report the foul and I headed down to administer the FTs. As I was heading down to the baseline, I noticed the clock was still running. I went over to the table to correct the clock, and after doing so, stopped to discuss it briefly with my partner. THis is his first year working varsity games. I explained what I saw, and said that if it happened again I would warn the coach, and then T if he continued beyond that. I went down to administer the FTs and my partner remained as the trail, table side.

After the 2nd FT, the ball was tipped out on the sideline on my side with V retaining possession, throwin coming in around the 3 point line extended on the sideline, forcing a switch.

As my partner headed to the baseline, he stopped to talk to the coach. I could tell that he was warning the coach about this, and the conversation lasted about 30 seconds. I got the ball back in play, and ended up calling a foul on a jump shot resulting in 2 FTs for the visitors. This puts me back table side. After the 2nd free throw, V sets up for their press again, and as Home team throws the ball in, Home HC turns to the V bench, calls the V HC by name, and asks, "How many points do you want?" WHACK!!

I call the T and tell the coach he's not going to talk to the opposing bench like that. We shoot the FTs and the the half plays out. Halftime score is 25-8.

Coach approaches us as we're leaving the court to defend his actions regarding instructing his players to throw it in to the other team. I told him that he was instructing his team not to play, and I was not going to allow that just because he had a beef with the other coach continuing to press. I let him know that I felt he was making a travesty of the game.

I pulled out my rulebook at halftime and looked up the travesty paragraph as has been quoted. I wasn't ready to call a forfeit. What I was willing to do was dump the coach and give an assistant an opportunity to let the girls play ball before callign a forfeit.

The second half was pretty uneventful. V came out with no full court press, and ended up winning by about 30.

As I was entering the gym to watch some of the next game, I saw this coach, and he approached me and said he'd like to talk to me before I left. There was plenty of time, so we found a place to sit down and talk. We had a pretty productive 15 minute discussion. He still didn't think he was wrong in any way. He felt that any team that was "in control" shouldn't be pressing like they were. I told him that was up to the other coach to decide when he wanted to call off the dogs. I certainly wasn't going to tell him he had to call off the dogs early in the 2nd quarter with only a 12 point lead.

To answer a couple of other questions. There was no real visible crowd reaction to any of this. In our postgame discussion, he said that he had several parents who supported his decision, and "they know what they're talking about, because we are a 'basketball town.' " I reminded him that for MANY years, the school he was coaching at had been a state powerhouse at their level, and had often been on the giving end of these full court press, run up the score kind of games. His response to that was, "That was a different coach, not me," and I said if you want to claim "basketball town" then you have to accept all that comes with it. Again, it was a civil, productive conversation, never got heated in any way.

As the teams came out for the second half, the V player making the throwin apologized to my partner for the behavior of her coach.