the regulatory merit of moving on

At a recent basketball officials’ training session, one of our superb association officials showed us a game video of a difficult situation. A white-team player shoots and misses, and the rebounding scuffle knocks the ball immediately out of bounds. The ref covering the shooter whistles in the midst of fans screaming for a foul on the aggressive blue-team defender. The ref on the other side has coverage of the relevant out-of-bounds line, and signals white ball. He attempts to check if the other ref had some other call. The blue-team coach goes ballistic.

The resulting situation: the blue-team coach, screaming at the ref, is standing where the thrown-in should be administered. The ref who has to administer the throw-in is not certain of the other ref’s call. The crowd is going wild, and the players are starting to fall out of game attention.

At this point, our trainer stopped the video and asked us what we would do. The administering ref could try to get the coach to move. Either ref could call a technical foul on the coach. The referees could huddle to discuss the situation.

As an experienced bureaucrat, I suggested calling a refs’ meeting.

Regulators with more wisdom know better. The trainer continued the video of the experienced refs in this difficult situation. The ref responsible for the out-of-bounds call steps up and administers a white thrown-in as near to the out-of-bounds point as is feasible given the position of the screaming blue-team coach. The ball becomes live.

The players play. The coach stops yelling at the referee and starts following play. The crowd stops yelling at the refs and starts watching play. The game is on. And, as everyone implicitly understands, it isn’t about the referees.