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Preventive Officiating
We all love to officiate
exciting, down-to-the-wire games with a packed gymnasium and the adrenaline
rush that those kinds of contests bring.
The kind of excitement that we don’t
enjoy is the kind where the officiating crew wrongly interjects itself into the
game, or allows a negative situation to happen that could have been
prevented. Certainly there are
occasional problems that are unavoidable and must be dealt with, but most “game
interrupting” problems that officials encounter in their games could have been
prevented with proper preparation and game management skills.
Preventive officiating starts in the
pregame conference with your partners. Go
over as many situations as you can think of so that you aren’t caught by
surprise during the game. The more
situations that you iron out with your partner before the game starts, the less variables there will be to deal
with after the game begins. Your pregame
form should change several times over the years as you add more and more
out-of-the-ordinary situations to it that you encounter. When you work with a partner who has some
useful things in his/her pregame discussion that you haven’t heard before,
write them down and add them to your pregame form. I always cringe when I work with a partner
who is the referee and their pregame discussion is five minutes or less. Invariably, something will happen in that
game that we should have discussed and we are out-of-sync in the way we handle
it. A solid pregame is just as important
as call selection and game management on the floor, and you can bet that a poor
pregame conference is taken into account when it’s time to give an official
their rating.
Preventive officiating continues when the
officiating crew walks on the floor and begins to observe the players. Find any jewelry and/or illegal equipment
right away and don’t allow a player to warm-up until they are legally
equipped. Note what the players are
working on in warm-ups. Which players
look to be shooters and which ones look to be bangers? Are there any lefties on either team? Are any of the players traveling or doing
some unusual moves that you need to take a second look at? It’s better to see them before the game
starts than to be surprised on the first play of the game. Now take a look at the facility you are
in. Is it a low ceiling or does the gym have anything hanging down that the ball might strike
during the game? Are there any guide
wires or straps attached to the backboard that the ball might strike on a high
bounce after a shot that hits rim? How
much room do you have on each end line to work as lead? Are the sidelines unusually tight so that you
might want to talk to your partner(s) about giving the thrower some extra room
on inbounds plays? Are the cheerleaders
already lined up so close to the floor that you might run into them when you
are sprinting down the floor to the lead position? Is the drummer from the band set up so close
to the floor as to present a danger?
Take note of any of these unusual situations and correct any of them
that are within your control.
It is true that one of the suggested
routines in official’s manual indicates that we should be at the scorer’s table
around the 10-minute mark. It’s much
wiser to be there no later than by the 11-minute mark. That way you have at least one minute to
ensure that each team has turned in their line-ups to the scorer and fix any
obvious discrepancy. Starting the game
with an administrative technical is a terrible way to begin a ballgame so do
everything you can within the rules to prevent it.
I’m sure I’m not the only official who has
had a coach or visiting scorekeeper challenge the accuracy of the home score
book from time to time, especially at lower level games where you might have a
distracted student working the book.
Even though we know the rule is to accept the home book totals as
official (unless we have definite knowledge otherwise), it can be a very
game-disrupting situation to have that kind of controversy. One thing I try to do if at all possible is
have the visiting scorer and the home scorer sit right next to each other. I tell them to communicate during the game to
stay in sync and ask them to compare their records often. Since I started doing this at every game
(knock on wood), I have not had any more of those discrepancy issues.
Communication with your partner(s) during
the game is a great preventive tool.
Some examples of that would be communicating with your partner(s) when
you notice that a player or coach is starting to get real frustrated. If both (or all three) officials make a
concerted effort to diffuse the frustration before it boils over, you might be
able to avoid a messy situation. A
common error I see quite often with newer officials is not communicating with
their partners about what is going to happen next prior to reporting a
time-out. After the time-out, one (or
more) official doesn’t remember where they’re supposed to be when inbounding
the ball (or worse yet, whose ball it is). Call the time-out, signal to your partners
what kind of time-out it is, then communicate what is
going to happen once the time-out is over.
Then go report to the
table. Most people think of time-outs as
a chance for coaches to communicate with players, but it’s a great opportunity
for the officials to communicate with each other. When needed, use time-outs to get together
briefly and find out if everyone feels “in sync.” Do you feel that all officials are calling
the “same game?” Do you need to tighten
up or is it a game where you can let the players “play through” a little
contact? If you need to use the entire
time-out to communicate and you never do get to your assigned time-out positions, that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Use your captains. Most of us remember who the captains are for
about how long? Yep,
until the opening tip is over.
I’m the same way in that I can’t remember their number once the game is
underway either. However, I do seem to
be able to remember faces. After the
captains meeting, I watch each captain for a few seconds while they warm-up to
try in an attempt to remember them for the whole game. They may come in handy later when you notice
that one of their teammates is starting to get frustrated, or even their coach
for that matter. The coaches usually
choose a level-headed kid to be the captain so use that level head to your
advantage. In my opinion, it is great
preventive officiating if
you can get a captain to diffuse a situation before it escalates
to the point where one of the officials needs to handle it.
Bench Decorum: Another thing that makes me cringe is when I
have a partner who says, “I don’t care where the coaches are as long as they
aren’t yelling at us.” To me, that is
the same as my partner saying, “I’m not very good at watching anything other
than the 10 players that are on the court.”
There is a reason that our state has a coach’s box. It’s to help us maintain control of the
coach’s behavior. If the coach is being
allowed to misbehave, that will usually spread to the fans and the players as
well. If the coach is so excited or angry
that he/she cannot stay in a 14-foot area, we need to control that situation. I’m not saying that you need to call a
technical foul if they stray, but at the very least you need to let them know
that you are aware that they left their box and motion them back in. If a coach is well out of his/her box AND
yelling at me or my partners, that is usually going to be a technical foul in
my games. Another mistake I think some
officials make is to make no mention of the coach’s box in the pregame
conference with the coaches. If you
mention it, they immediately realize that you are aware of it and that you will
probably be monitoring it. If you make
no mention of it, they might just assume that you don’t care or that you
haven’t advanced your game yet to the point where you are able to keep an eye
on it.
I read an article about basketball
officiating once that said that the perfect game would be one where the
officials called a handcheck, an illegal screen, rough play in the post and
3-seconds-in-the-key against each team in the first quarter. While that is rarely going to happen, think
about what message each of those calls sends.
In that “perfect game,” you have just let each team know that you are
going to have a clean game that is called consistent on each end. You have also just made it possible to make
one of those calls towards the end of the game if necessary, because it isn’t
the first time you have pulled one of those out of the hat. In my opinion, it’s a heck of a lot easier to
start tight and then loosen up on the amount of contact that you allow as the
game goes along. Trying to reign in a
game that you have allowed to become too physical is much more difficult.
Another thing to do early is to get teams
out of time-outs in a reasonable amount of time. If you let them lag in their huddle in the
first quarter, it will just get worse and worse as the game goes on. If you think you need to put the ball on the
floor and blow your whistle before the teams are back on the floor, do it early
in the game which is a lot less disruptive and “game changing” than doing it
late. Reminding the coaches in their
pregame meeting that you expect them to be on the floor at the second time-out
horn can be effective as well.
Your halftime break is a chance to talk
about how the first half went and to prepare for the second half. Talk about adjustments you feel that you need
to make not only in call selection, but also in communication between
partners. If some other association refs
are at the game and they come into the locker room with you, ask them for input
and observations they had in the first half.
Don’t have so much pride that you can’t accept some input from your
peers. I love it when one of the officials from the JV game comes in at
halftime and has the courage to give me some constructive criticism on a mechanic,
a call, or even a communication issue.
Officials that are watching the game from the stands are
"emotionally removed" from the game and may have a different view of
the “whole picture” from yours. Let them give you the perspective of the game
from the bleachers.
Be good “dead ball” officials. Remember that 80% of “big problems” happen
while games are in dead ball situations.
Check the scorer’s table, bench area, and clocks at every whistle. There should never be a time when there is
not at least one official watching the players, even during time-outs. When you need to get together with one or
both partners during a dead ball, turn you body so that you can have the
conversation while facing the players.
In a 3-official game, the “piggy-back” method works well. Have two officials get together while the
third one watches the players. Then have
one of the “
Now I’ll move on to some actual specific
techniques during the game that can help your game go smoother. This is most certainly not an all-inclusive list, but just a few examples to get you
thinking about the wide variety of preventive things an official can do to
avoid trouble.
On throw-ins, show the defender where the
plane is with your hand. Remind the
thrower what they are allowed to do (run the end line after a goal or back up
straight up as far as they want on a spot throw-in). If you have already had a delay-of-game-warning
for a plane violation, tell the defender what the consequence of breaking the
plane is going to be (a technical foul).
During a recent varsity game, a partner of mine made a good “plane
violation” delay call on a throw-in. I
was right by the table so I turned and had the scorer write down the delay
violation in the score book. My partner
had about 20 seconds alone with the thrower and the defender while I did
this. On the ensuing throw-in, the
defender once again reached through the plane so my partner called a technical
foul. After the game, I asked my partner
what he said to the defender while I was at the table with the
scorekeeper. “Nothing,” was the answer I
received. Some good preventive
officiating by my partner would have easily
prevented that second technical foul.
Count the players after each substitution
and after all time-outs. Don’t signal to
your partner that you are ready to go until you are sure that you have 5
players from each side (no more and no less) ready to go. On free throws, make sure that you have two
defensive players in the first lane space on each side of the lane and no
players in the fourth spot. These are
obvious things to do, but how often do we consciously look and do this rather
than just assuming that the lane is properly occupied?
Stay focused on which team is going which
way. Players get confused at times and
you can save the game. Sometimes, the
wrong team might even want to make the throw-in. Take a little extra time before you inbound
and stay focused! If you aren’t 100%
sure that “things feel right,” keep your hand up and make your partner wait a
couple extra seconds until you are sure.
Officials tend to feel hurried at times, but the truth is that nobody
notices a few extra seconds of wait time except for the officials.
Don’t interrupt a team huddle during a
time-out, but let coaches and players know when they are completely out of
time-outs as they are breaking out of their huddle. Having to call a technical
foul for an "excessive time-out" is not a good way to end a game so
do everything you can to avoid it.
Keep focused in blowouts. You might have to call MORE fouls in a
blow-out rather than having the attitude of “let’s just get out of here with as
few whistles as possible.” Be very aware
of the “frustration factor” that can be present in a team that is getting
beaten badly. Don’t officiate down to
the level of sloppy game.
What if you have an injured player during a
dead ball, and you turn to see that the coach is already coming onto the
floor? Start beckoning. The technical foul for a coach coming onto
the floor is intended to protect officials from a coach who is coming out to
cause problems. If the coach is coming
onto the floor to help a player, that is a good thing and should be
encouraged. Just remember that once you
beckon, the injured player either needs to leave the game or be kept in the
game with a time-out.
When you are inside of a minute during a
closely-contested game, use your preventive skills even more. Remember that officials are accustomed to
pressure situations but the table personnel may be the ones to get us into
trouble with their inexperience.
Communicate with your table crew.
Before inbounding the ball in the last few seconds of the game, take the
time to go over to table (even if you have to jog halfway across the court) and
remind them NOT to start clock until they see you chop in time!
This certainly hasn’t been intended as a
complete list of techniques and tips on preventive officiating, but hopefully
it gets you thinking about even more things that you can come up with to avoid
preventable problems. Challenge yourself to remove as many obstacles to a
perfect game as you can and avoid those messy situations. Let the excitement come from the game itself
rather than from the officiating crew.