Time out

[Nevadaref]

Originally Posted by APG

You, and nobody else follows the rules, 100%, all the time. Unless you're saying you call a 3 second violation at exactly 3 seconds...even if a player has just a heel in the paint. Just saying.

Officials must observe several aspects of play at any point in the game and obviously not all of this can be done. There are times when an official's focus is on hand to arm contact, a foot or ball near a boundary, a pivot foot, or the ball near the ring which will cause some other action that possibly constitutes an infraction to be overlooked. This kind of prioritizing is a necessity of officiating and the better officials multi-task and make the best choices in what to watch and what to ignore.
So if I observe a 3 second violation, I most certainly will penalize it according to the rules. However, this would be a low priority item with me as I prefer to focus on illegal contact, screens, LGP, GT/BI, and the pivot foot. So I doubt that I will get around to noticing your heel in the lane for three seconds.

That is very different from what some have suggested here which is to deliberately and improperly misapply the rules because of a personal opinion as to what is fair or the right thing to do.