Leaving Court for an Unauthorized Reason
 

A1, A2 set a screen near baseline in front court. B1 goes out of bounds to avoid the screen. Meanwhile the play developes to allow A an offense play. B isn't doing this intentionally to stop play like on the fast break case play. Would you:
1. Allow the play to develope and give A the scoring opportunity, and tell coach B to keep his player in bounds. (they may just not know they can't do that)
2. Call a violoation on B immediately. Spot throw-in and possibily give A an opportunity at a defensive turn-over.
3. Ignore it if B wasn't affected by the violation. Still say something to A coach at an appropiate time.

I wouldn't care about this. The purpose of the rule is to prevent the offense from gaining an advantage or giving either team an advantage. Neither occurred here and calling a violation you take away an opportunity for A to score. I honestly don't talk to coaches unless they ask a question or a very complex situation arises.

In 14 years I called this once, and yesterday I had another first. BV, offense inbounding on their endline, kid runs about 20 feet OOB after throwing the ball in.

I don't get why we make such a big deal out of leaving the court stuff on this forum.

Use common sense. (And it's not our job to teach coaches and players the rules. It's their job to know them.)

1. Waste of time talking to Coach B over this.
2. Coach A is going to be pissed that you interrupted his offensive set and Coach B is going to give you a WTF look. And more importantly, my assignor would give you a HUGE WTF.
3. Just leave it at "Ignore" and you're good to go.

This important sentence is straight from the rules book and one people should reference more IMO:

"Therefore, it is important to know the intent and purpose of a rule so that it may be intelligently applied in each play situation."

3. Just leave it at "Ignore" and you're good to go. This is the one I went with

It's not a big deal. I merely posed a question. If you don't feel the question is worthy of your response don't reply.

And I answered your question. I merely stated my opinion that we worry about the technicalities of leaving the court violations/technical fouls far too much. Common sense is our friend in these situations.

I think it's probably because the rulebook doesn't explicitly define what an "unauthorized" (or "authorized", for that matter) reason for leaving the court would be.

Besides, we're officials... we pedants almost by definition.

It’s the same 10ish guys who respond within 5 minutes of any question, or comment using their passive aggressive jargon to make others feel inferior. Even when an honest debate occurs around the true spirit and intent of a rule or situation, someone eventually chimes in with sarcasm. Then it’s “LET THE PISSING MATCH COMMENCE”! I imagine more people would get involved and post questions about our sport if they didn’t see the exchanges that went on with the ruling class on here.

You really didn't anwer a quesiton, you started off with a question of your own.

If you want to interpret what was simply my personal opinion into a personal attack on you, or interpret it as trying to make you feel inferior, knock yourself out. My opinion was that we should use common sense. I'm allowed to share my opinion, and if I pose a question that you don't understand or care about, then feel free to post your opinion. I couldn't care less. But to imply that I went out of my way to make you feel inferior is simply outrageous.

I think you've misunderstood him. If you read this forum regularly, you'll see 3-4 questions a week that involve a player touching out of bounds, and somebody insisting it's a violation, when it's nothing.

This is what brought me here. I've learned quite a bit.

This is the funny/entertaining part that keeps me here.

This is why the forum is saved to my favorites!

If you used our search function you would see the countless number of player out of bounds for reason XYZ that have been posted. If you come here to learn, first search. If you don't find sufficient information then post.

We know at certain times of the year what types of questions will be brought up (see March Madness) and we also know what our top 10 questions asked are. This is in the top 10. It shouldn't be, but it is. There are no intricacies to this call. When you see it once every 5-10 years, it's barely a blip on our radar until it needs to be called.

A question from my soapbox
 

While some may only see this once every few years, I am sarting to see it more regularly -- at least a half dozen times this season. I can understand why questions about it come up because it happens enough to know it is something but not enough to be sure what that something is. And yes, the search option is available but I can see why someone new to the forum would just ask. When somene has come here to learn by asking a question being told to go look in the rule book or do a search may be off-putting.

Now, my question: Since this is occuring a little more often, what do you do when you call it? Do any of you have a hand signal or specific phrase you like to use? Do you call it an "out of bounds" violation or something else?

I had this happen twice in a MS boys game this season. The first time, I tried to be preventative with a "Stay inbounds #__." The next time down, he went out of bounds again and went farther out of bounds than the previous time, so I called the violation. The team's coach wasn't happy. The opposing coach even insisted there was no such rule.

When I called it, I just pointed out of bounds and said, "#__ left the court for an unauthorized reason, white ball."