Rndballref
20 Years Experience
Chicago, IL
Male, 60
For twenty years I officiated high school, AAU and park district basketball games, retiring recently. For a few officiating is the focus of their occupation, while for most working as an umpire or basketball referee is an avocation. I started ref'ing to earn beer money during college, but it became a great way to stay connected to the best sports game in the universe. As a spinoff, I wrote a sports-thriller novel loosely based on my referee experiences titled, Advantage Disadvantage
Like most things in life it is not difficult to be a referee. However, it is very hard to be a good referee. Here are some of the reasons: 1) You need to study the rule book - it takes a long time to really understand and internalize them, 2) once the rules are understood it takes a long time to decide which rules should not be enforced at which levels/situations, 3) since there is a learning curve, you have to make a big commitment to it before you can be well compensated, 4) even if you develop into a good referee, you have to be lucky enough to be "discovered" and/or mentored by people in a position to help and promote you, and finally you have to have a different occupation that allows you spend your time investing in ref'ing. Oh yeah, you also need thick skin.
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I have officiated some house leagues, summer high school leagues and travelling basketball tourneys where a shooting foul is awarded 1 point and the ball, and a common foul after 7 team fouls also gets 1 point + ball. At one point in time there was a proposal in college ball that a team would have the option of shooting free throws OR the ball. Doesn't seem like anyone talks about that anymore. I think the pros like close games and slowing the game down with fouls compresses the score, but those last 2 minutes sometimes takes 20 minutes.
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You are allowed to screen or block out if you get to a space before your opponent leaves his feet to get to that spot. It is no different than blocking out on a rebound.
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According to theriches.com beginning NBA referees make $150,000 and senior officials make up to $550,000. In every game, one official is designated as the "referee" and the others are "officials". In NFHS, the referee has certain additional duties such as picking who will toss jump balls, giving pre-game instructions etc.. But the "referee" is not supposed to overrule the other two officials. I suspect that in the NBA, senior officials might have additional duties such as travel arrangements, meetings, training, rule advisories, etc.
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If A is standing out of bounds, and a ball that was in bounds touches him before hitting the floor out of bounds, A is considered to have caused the ball to go out of bounds.
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The rule book states that a player is out of bounds if any part of his body is touching out of bounds or touching a player who is out of bounds. It also states that an airborne player has the geographical position of where he jumped from (until he lands). So the player does not by rule have to have two feet in bounds, just one as long as the other is in the air and not out of bounds.
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The inbounder is considered a player (not a sub or a bench personnel). If the ball has achieved inbound status (in your case when the ball is touched or deflected by an inbounds player) and then the inbounder-player who status is still out of bounds, the ball is awarded to the opposite team of the inbounder, assuming the ball hit the inbounder first (before hitting the floor, bleechers, out of bounds referees, spectators).
There is no definition in the NFHS rule book of a live or dead player. There is live/dead ball definition, but not player. Team members are defined as players, substitutes or bench personnel.
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