Missing Scorebook

[BktBallRef]

Originally Posted by yooperbballref

I am a first year official and was working a JV game with a very experienced partner. The first half went well and we came out to start the second half. The ball was about to be inbounded to start the second half when we were notified that the official book was not at the table. Apparently the home AD took the book on accident thinking it was the freshman book and he wanted to make a copy of it.

We waited for about two minutes and with the book still missing we gave the home team a T.

We knew that it was illegal for the official book to leave the table during the game so we assumed we were doing the correct thing. What we learned after the game looking in the rule book is that even though it is illegal for the book to leave the table, there is no penalty for doing so.

Actually, that's not true. If you believe the book was removed as part of an unsporting act, you can assess a T.

In this situation, assuming there was a visitor's book, I would make the visiting book the official book and play basketball.