Sitting a player down

[TimTaylor]

As others have said we don't have the authority to "sit a player down" unless the specific league rules permit it. If the rules don't allow for it, then the best approach is to call the foul.

There have been situations where I have quietly told a coach that #xx was getting out of control and they needed to calm him/her down, and in almost every case the coach took care of it. The vast majority of coaches have been very cooperative in these situations.

However we do have other options if needed, depending on the situation.

Case in point - 4 years ago in a JVB regular season game: Home is up by 20 with about 1:30 left in Q4. Home has the ball and is passing it around the perimeter and as H2 at the elbow extended passes the ball back to H1, V2 comes charging up from the lower block on the lane line and violently pushes H2 off the court into the home bench.

I immediately came up with an intentional foul signal, quickly verified that H2 seemed to be OK then walked past the table telling them I would be with them in a second. I then approached the visiting HC and quietly told him that V2 was completely out of control (the kid had been getting more & more physical over the last couple minutes and calling fouls didn't stop him) and needed to come out of the game before someone really got hurt. The coach gave me a line of crap about it was nothing but good hard defense and he wanted to see more of it.

So I went to the reporting area, and reported a flagrant intentional foul on V2, which I had every justification in doing based on V2's actions. As a result, the kid was suspended and the school was fined. It was probably a mistake to give the coach a chance to handle it, and in hind sight if something like that ever happens again I'll more than likely just go straight to the flagrant.