First, there is no circumstance where you award team A two points and then give team A the ball. I'm sure that's not what you meant. Second when a team is attacking the wrong basket and the other team is defending that wrong basket, when you realize it, you stop it then. You don't have to wait for any certain thing to happen.

As posted earlier in this thread:

4-5-4: If by mistake officials permit a team to go the wrong direction, when discovered all points scored, fouls committed, and time consumed shall count as if each team had gone the proper direction. Play shall resume with each team going the proper direction based on bench location.

I 90% agree. I would just argue that you stop action when you determine you've allowed it to get to the point of a mistake, not necessarily immediately if you made no mistake to begin with. So in my OP, I saw a team was defending the wrong basket, but there had been no officials' mistake to that point. I would say that once I realize I have failed to call some kind of applicable violation, now I have made a mistake in allowing the teams to continue going the wrong direction, and 4-5-4 applies at that point.

Alternatively, if there is a violation, a foul, or a goal at the wrong basket, now we have another opportunity to point and verbalize the proper direction (maybe a little more deliberately this time).

As soon as the teams are playing "normal" basketball at the wrong ends, then stop it and fix it. Otherwise, someone is going to realize it and have an uncontested layup at the "right" end (or, you'll have to stop it with a violation -- and that doesn't make any sense if the player figured out the problem).

If not immediately, when??

You're gonna have to stop play sooner or later. Why not sooner?

Because as has been stated before, I feel if no error on the officials' part, you let the chips fall where they may. In my case, I didn't know if Team A was prepped to get an easy basket or not. I also should have been thinking, "they're equally as prepped to commit a backcourt or 10-second violation."

Either way, in most cases, something is going to cause my partner(s) or I to have a whistle pretty soon, so play will be stopped sooner rather than later regardless.

It isn't necessary for an official's error to be the cause of the problem for it to be your problem. If you say white's ball and point the wrong way and blue goes to that end to defend, that's all sorts of bad, and everybody knows what happened and why it happened. BUT if A1 picks up a loose ball at the division line and head toward B's basket and the whole B team sprints down ahead of him and sets up a defense, all for no reason at all, if you realize it, you stop and fix it. Whether that's 2 seconds later or 5 minutes later.

Period

Yep, that's what I meant - B gets points, A gets ball


This is not a 4-5-4 situation. In this case the officials did not "permit" a team to go the wrong way. The officials had CORRECTLY indicated to both teams the CORRECT way to go but they went the wrong way.

If we incorrectly apply 4-5-4 to this situation as some are suggesting then by extention the refs should stop the game on a take-away if for some reason the teams run the wrong way. I've never seen a team stopped from scoring in the wrong basket but I have seen the refs stop play after a basket to get everyone back on the right track and make sure the right team inbounds the ball afterwards.

Its as simple as cause and effect. Ask yourself who "caused" the teams to set up and go the wrong way. If it was the ref (pointed the wrong way, lined up facing the wrong direction for a jump ball, put the ball in play under the wrong basket) then I agree that 4-5-4 applies. But in the OP the refs did nothing to influence where the teams took up positions or which basket they ran towards after the throw in.

And what if the situation in the OP was exactly the same except that A2 ran to his own basket and scored? I guess for the sake of Team B we should apply 4-5-4 and stop the game before he scores since this must have been "caused" by the same "error" that the refs made in the original post.

Show me the part where it says it matters what the original cause of the problem is. It says "If by mistake officials permit a team to go the wrong way....." It tells you how to deal with the aftermath. If you see that both teams are actively playing the wrong way, and you don't stop it, then you are permitting it, which is indeed a mistake.

Stop posting this. You are dead wrong.

I even had a strange game several years ago in which a team wanted to win by at least 4, but not more than 10 due to tiebreakers for playoff seeding. They were attempting to avoid facing a specific team in the opening round.

Guess what happened in the last minute when this team was leading by 12? Yep, they purposely tried to score for the opponents and were being defended.

At any reasonably high level of play (any level where the players/coaches should know better), assuming my crew and I have used proper mechanics to indicate the direction of play, I'm going to let play continue and see what happens. Our role is to observe the game, determine the facts of the game, and apply the rules to those events.

If A throws the ball into the FC and takes it into the BC, we have a violation. If A throws the ball into the BC, we start a count and eventually a violation if the ball remains in A's TC in the BC for ten seconds. If A1 throws the ball toward B's basket and gets his own "rebound", we may have a violation for traveling or illegal dribble depending on this circumstances. If A is "successful" in throwing the ball into B's basket, B will score two points and A will have a BCELTI. If B is also clueless, they'll think they have a throw-in and may attempt to make the ball live; if this occurs, B will be warned for delay per 4-47-3.

The point is that we don't really need to tell the teams that they may be confused. The rules do perfectly well to handle situations like this. It's almost impossible for more than 15-20 seconds to go by without a violation occurring in a situation like this. When that violation occurs, call it. If the players are confused, you explain the call and they'll quickly realize that they were going the wrong way.

Couple of things here. First, the team who wanted to win by no more than 10 went up by more than that with plans to work it out at the end? And the other team knew about all this, took exception to it, and their competitive nature made them do whatever they could to ruin the other team's night? Second, if they're doing this, it's no longer basketball. Under the definition/description/explanation of THE GAME it says it consists of a team trying to throw the ball into its own basket. If it comes down to what you describe above, I'm thinking you might call the game and go home.

Or if we don't go for that, it really doesn't matter. Say the words "by mistake" are the key. If they start in the wrong direction, you step in one time and tell everybody, then it's no longer by mistake. Play on, but I don't see how the game could proceed very well due to the imminent threat of a backcourt violation.

Amen.

Curious. Did they achieve their 4-10 point desired window? If so, that's one of the cooler BB stories I've heard in a while.

Reminds me of NFL Week 17 about 20 years ago when in the NFC, seeding came down to overall points for (PF); something like seven higher tiebreakers were all dead even. So a couple of teams were just slingin' it downfield every chance they got to get as many points as possible. It was wild.

Very well said, we aren't trying to dictate or determine intentions, only actions. As soon as something happens to cause the ball to become dead, then we can attempt to straighten everyone out.

If both teams are confused, please don't issue a DOG warning. It's neither necessary nor prudent. Every time a team intentionally puts the ball in the wrong basket, you'll likely need to blow the whistle to straighten things out. (The exception being Nevada's situation).

Calling a DOG warning here is the very difinition of OOO, IMO, when both teams are confused.