Leaping high school coach circumvents rules by playing defense on the sideline

If your basketball team is throwing the ball inbounds, there’s already a 4-on-5 disadvantage. It can’t get any more difficult than that — unless the opposing coach is in your face stopping you from throwing it to your teammate.

This is actually a thing! During a game between Johnson High School and Greater Atlanta Christian, the coach got up from his seat and started waving his hands right in front of the player inbounding the ball. The coach played what looks like defense right next to a high school player.

The player is even confused and points to the refs as if to say, “Are you going to do something about this?”

The best part of all of this: it’s within the rules! FOX 5 talked to the coaching mastermind behind this technique, Johnson High School’s Utaff Gordon.

As long as you don’t interfere with the ball, and as long as you don’t talk to the opposing player. So what I do, is I talk loud enough to my players where it gets on the nerves of the opposing player. In other words, I try to circumvent the rules.”

Even Bill Belichick is probably reading this somewhere going, “Dang, that’s good.”

NBA refs probably wouldn’t allow something like this to happen in a game, but can you imagine if they did? That would create so much more strategy in coaching. You’d be so happy to have a coach like Patrick Ewing or Phil Jackson, who are already as tall as the players on the court. At the very least, as owner, you’d have to consider the coach’s wingspan. We need a head coaching combine.

But is this just limited to a head coach? Why not just get the entire coaching staff involved. As long as they don’t touch the ball or talk to the opposing team, they should be allowed.