old rule question ( before 1980 )

[Mark T. DeNucci, Sr.]

Originally Posted by LeeBallanfant

Guaranteed that if an official had to enforce it, 90% of the time, they would screw it up. I have seen Techs given to the team leading, Officials pointing the wrong way, officials ignoring that a warning had to given each period, etc.

The worst screwup was in a university game, tied and offensive team holding ball for last shot with about 10 seconds to go. The official instead of giving a verbal and pointing warning blew the whistle and gave the warning. On the succeeding throwin, ball was stolen, and game was won on an easy layup.

The saving grace was that if 90% of the officials could not correctly apply the rule, 100% of the coaches had no idea what should be done.

Truly a stupid rule ranking ahead of players having to raise their hands on fouls called against them or receive a Tech.

LeeBallanfant:

I have been a basketball official for 41 years and this rule was in effect for the first 20 or so of those years. To be honest, I rarely saw this rule have to be applied. The only time that this rule had an increased chance of having to be applied was during a slow down game (at the college level read: Dean Smith and North Carolina). It really did not take a rocket scientist to apply this rule. Back in the day, most high schools only had one scoreboard so it took a little effort to know what the score of the game was but that was just a minor inconvience.

Since there was not Shot Clock in the rules, the LSA rule was there to keep the game from becoming an actionless contest. The rule was repealed at the high school level because it was decided that if a team wanted to hold the ball while being behind in the score or want to stay back on defense, it was only hurting itself and not its opponent. And of course with men's college adopting a shot clock the rule became moot.

MTD, Sr.

P.S. While I am not a rocket scientist, I am a structural engineer, and BillyMac is a chemist, so I guess we can claim to be scientists.