NBA Official Keeps Spare Whistle in Pocket!

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by Welpe

I still don't understand the antipathy towards this practice.

Because it is used as a crux for many officials to assume what the arrow direction should be pointed. And I have seen personally many officials that use this trick forget to move the whistle at all or at the right time. But they cannot make sure the arrow is being switched properly or remember when the last time we actually switched the arrow and why. If I had not seen it used in epic failure so many times, I probably would not be as adamant about the practice being silly. We are not football officials, there are not multiple things in our pocket as a normal practice to do our job. If I did not have to replace a whistle or lanyard, I would not even go into my pocket for anything during the course of a game. An AP situation can theoretically happen 10 times in a game and then you have a guy digging in their pocket and constantly have to adjust themselves and their pants just to fix their pocket properly.

Peace