Basketball
In International basketball, timeouts can only be called by the coach. In most USA based leagues, they can be called by both players and coaches.
In American college basketball, there are two systems of timeouts used. In games that are not broadcast, each team is allowed four 75-second and two 30-second timeouts per regulation game. In games which are broadcast on television, radio, or over the Internet, each team is granted one 60-second timeout and four 30-second timeouts per game in addition to the media timeouts each half.
In the North American National Basketball Association, the rule on timeouts is more complex. Teams are allowed one 20-second timeout per half, and six regular timeouts, of one minute in length over the course of the entire game. During a 20-second timeout, only one player may be substituted. During a regular timeout, there is no limit on substitutions.
In the first and third quarter, there must be two 100-second timeouts. If neither team has taken a timeout prior to 6:00 of the first or third period, the Official Scorer must take it at the first dead ball and charge it to the home team. If no subsequent timeouts are taken prior to 3:00, the Official Scorer must take it and charge it to the team not previously charged.
In the second and fourth quarter, there must be three 100-second timeouts. If neither team has taken a timeout prior to 9:00 of the second or fourth period, a mandatory timeout is called by the Official Scorer and charged to neither team. If there are no subsequent timeouts taken prior to 6:00, the Official Scorer must take it at the first dead ball and charge it to the home team. If no subsequent timeouts are taken prior to 3:00, the Official Scorer must take it and charge it to the team not previously charged. In the fourth quarter, each team is limited to a maximum of three timeouts and if a team has two or three full timeouts remaining when the fourth period reaches the 2:00 mark, one of the timeouts will be changed to a 20-second timeout and it will retain one full timeout.
In overtime periods, each team shall be allowed two 60-second timeouts and one 20-second timeout. If a team has two full timeouts remaining when the overtime period reaches the 2:00 mark, one of the timeouts will be changed to a 20-second timeout.
The Official Scorer notifies a team when it has been charged with a mandatory timeout. Additional timeouts in a period, beyond those that are mandatory, are for 60 seconds.
Under both college and NBA rules, if a team calls a timeout when it has none left, the team is assessed a technical foul. (In college basketball, this means the team loses possession of the ball. In the NBA, the team keeps the ball because technical fouls do not carry automatic loss of possession.) The most famous incident of this rule happened during the 1993 NCAA championship game when Chris Webber, playing for the University of Michigan Wolverines, called a time-out with 11 seconds left in the game. The technical foul thus received secured the game victory for the opponents, the University of North Carolina. A similar episode happened in a 2008 game between the Phoenix Suns and the Seattle SuperSonics, when Sonics forward Wally Szczerbiak, with his team trailing by one in the final 15 seconds, called a timeout that the Sonics didn't have, after not being able to inbound the ball in 5 seconds. The mistake cost the Sonics possession and the game, being defeated 103-99.
Read more about this topic: Time-out (sport), List of Time-out Rules By Sport
Famous quotes containing the word basketball:
“Perhaps basketball and poetry have just a few things in common, but the most important is the possibility of transcendence. The opposite is labor. In writing, every writer knows when he or she is laboring to achieve an effect. You want to get from here to there, but find yourself willing it, forcing it. The equivalent in basketball is aiming your shot, a kind of strained and usually ineffective purposefulness. What you want is to be in some kind of flow, each next moment a discovery.”
—Stephen Dunn (b. 1939)