What could you possibly tell a state association in this case? "I'm pretty sure the coach was lying, but I have no evidence, and I didn't look into it?"

I don't see that going anywhere.

What Berkut did may have been risky, but it worked. He smelled a rat, and had good instincts. Some may have checked with the player and asked how he got poked. Either way, he prevented scummy behavior from prevailing.

You're still asking for trouble when doubting an injury or not. We are never put in a position to ascertain the legitimacy of an injury. The matter of the fact is the OP got lucky that coach didn't push the matter further. The only thing we can do is report this to the state. What they can or decide to do is up to them.

Yes IMO to go automatically intentional in this play is being over-officious. Especially if it is hard deny and there isn't any shirt grabbing or other "non-basketball" action.

Exactly. It happens all the time throughout the game, and we never think twice about calling it a common foul. Suddenly, in the last minute, people want to change the way they call it just because the clock stops on the call.

1. That's pretty much what I'd say, but rather than "I didn't look into it" it would be, "I know I had no authority to question him on the court, but I'm pretty sure he was lying."
2. If it goes anywhere is not my concern. If this coach is that duplicitous, it'll catch up with him in time. Even if it doesn't, still not my concern. My job is to follow the rules and (maybe) report suspicions to the state where appropriate.
3. What Berkut did could have gotten him sued, and righfully so, if the player was truly injured. "Sorry, coach, I don't think your player is injured. He has to shoot." Now imagine a very likely scenario with a rebound situation and that player has his injury aggravated.

Not only do you have no rule basis for doing this, you're just setting yourself up for heartache by even going down that road.

Also, by doing what he did, now what does he tell the state? "Yeah, I ignored the rules here and told the coach he couldn't pull his injured player." If he reports the coach, then he admits to the state that he risked the player's health. Over the top? Not really, because even if he judged the risk to be small, that's what he did.

Now, maybe if the coach had pressed the issue, he would have caved and allowed the sub.

Bottom line, though, Berkut got away with one here. And no matter how positive he was about it, it's a very dangerous road to condone the decision in a public forum with new officials who may not possess Berkut's enlightened wisdom and medical expertise.

I agree it is not an automatic intentional and I apologize for giving that impression. I was poorly trying to state what you all know, that the definition of an intentional foul covers the the deliberate attempt to prevent the clock from starting. If that situation occurs we have a means to prevent the defense from unfairly gaining an advantage by having an opportunity to regain the ball without any time having elapsed on the clock. But I would avoid the terms automatic, always and never; they tend to come back and haunt me. :)

Once the thrower-in has released the ball, they can no longer affect the outcome of the pass (unless the pass is really really piss-poor). So then the cutter (to the ball) is at that moment, responsible for completing the in bounds pass. So "steal from the cutter" means to prevent the successful in bounds pass - either by a real steal or a legitimate attempt at a low-success chance of a steal.

In my OP, I did mention "before the ball it touched in bounds" for when the foul should happen. I could have said "airborne after the release".

This is pretty much the conclusion I came to after the game. I was pretty comfortable doing it during the game, with no time to think about it, but in retrospect it was a mistake.

Who am I to say if a kid is injured?

On the other hand...it is pretty galling to let it happen, when I am pretty much positive he was full of ****.

I think the only other thing I could have done would be to ratchet up the pressure on the coach a little bit, *without* saying his player must shoot - ie, ask the player to come over, ask HIM if he is hurt, generally make a bigger deal of it and see if the coach just backs down, without ever saying the player cannot be subbed for?

I dunno, it was certainly one of those "Well, never been faced with THIS situation before..." kind of things. Going to send an email to my interpreter though.