Funny Story - playing with less than 5

[theboys]

After the recent thread about playing with less than five I had to relate this story.

My son and I play in an adult "church" rec league. (Church is in quotes because the attitudes of some players are worse than in any playground I've ever played on - sad).

Anyway, last Sunday was the first round of the playoffs. Because my son, and two of his buddies who also play on the team, were in an out-of-town tournament, and a couple of guys were no-shows, only three of our players made it to the game. Since we couldn't start with only three players, one of the guys had his 10 and 6 year-old daughters stand on the floor to start the game. After the tip, the girls left the floor, and we played 5-on-3 the entire game.

Now, I know this gets into some pretty blatant rule-bending, but remember this is a church league, where officials (one of whom claims to be a high schoo ref) regularly make "over the back" calls. The image is pretty funny, tho.

Oh, and, we won the game.

[ChuckElias]

Originally posted by theboys
Since we couldn't start with only three players, one of the guys had his 10 and 6 year-old daughters stand on the floor to start the game. After the tip, the girls left the floor, and we played 5-on-3 the entire game.

If the girls were allowed to leave the floor after the start of the game, why did anybody bother to put them on the floor at the beginning?

What I mean is, if the girls were considered to be players so that the game could be started, then you have to put 5 players on the floor if you have 5 players available.

Did the other team really care about starting with 5? Or was it just a cutsey thing so that the girls could say they were in the game?

Chuck

[theboys]

I suspect the officials are a little light in the rules knowledge department. They probably enforced the "you have to start with five" rule, but didn't enforce (or understand) the "you have to play with five if five are available" rule. I'm pretty sure they weren't being cutesy.

[oc]

I had a similar situation a couple months ago. I live in Japan and play in local adult league using FIBA rules. According to FIBA rules only the coach (or someone on the bench can call time-outs). In one of our recent games we only had 5 guys-so theoretically we could never call a time-out. So whenever we needed to call time one of our players had to tell his 4 year old son, who was sitting on the bench, to call time-out.

And then we would stand around and catch our breath while he would try and tell us what to do differently. (He did a good job. He told me I am big so I should stay next to the hoop.--We won)