Fans stood and screamed for fouls, and players glanced hopefully at the officials after losing the ball. Again and again, play went on. Because understand this: If your offensive strategy is to drive to the rack and hope for a bail-out call, Adrian Dantley is not the official you want to see on the court. Even if you’re in the fifth grade.

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“Get stronger,” the NBA Hall-of-Famer explained, after the Warriors pulled out a one-point win at Blair High School on a recent Sunday afternoon. “Someone bumps up against you and you fall down? I ain’t calling it. That’s not my makeup.”

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What is Dantley’s makeup? Well, his makeup has him playing full-court games of one-on-one at the age of 61; eating a vegetarian diet (vegan meatballs are a favorite); weighing a ripped 195 pounds for the first time since he was a student at Bertie Backus Junior High; working as a Montgomery County school crossing guard; and officiating more than a hundred basketball games each winter, featuring middle-aged men, junior varsity teenagers, and fifth-graders who have no idea that the man in the striped shirt is one of the most prolific scorers in NBA history.

Their parents? That’s another story.

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“I have to admit, I was probably watching him as much as I was watching my kid,” said Rich Buckley of Bethesda, recalling the first time Dantley officiated a B-town game. “You just stand there in awe.”

“I love AD; he’s a legend,” said Ricky Hahn, another local youth coach. “He makes the right calls; he doesn’t try to affect the game. … And he could post anybody up out there.”

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Dantley’s unusual post-retirement jobs have gotten plenty of attention, especially after Deadspin’s Dave McKenna highlighted Dantley’s work as a crossing guard. Dantley has said — and it’s hard to tell whether he’s serious — that he took that job for the health insurance; not because he is down on his luck, but because he chafed at out-of-pocket insurance costs. The refereeing? You’re not alone if you can’t figure that one out.

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“Oh, my friends think I’m crazy,” Dantley said. “I mean, none of my friends do what I do. I can’t get none of my friends to do it. I can’t even get none of my friends to walk, let alone exercise.”

“I tell everybody right up front: He does not think the same way you think,” said Dinitri Dantley, his wife of 35 years. “When they made him, they broke the mold. Or maybe they had to create a whole different mold.”

Dantley said he probably averaged six days of officiating a week this winter. He recently attended the ACC tournament semifinals at Verizon Center, where he was honored as Notre Dame’s ACC legend, but he had his own games to officiate on the day of the tournament final. Two days later, he worked adult league men’s games; “old-timers, guys I grew up with that put on 50 pounds and try to make moves,” Dantley said. “They’re funnier than these guys,” he added, gesturing at the fifth-graders. He refereed one men’s game without realizing it would involve his son Cameron, the former Syracuse quarterback.

You don’t expect this from an NBA journeyman, much less one of the best scorers in league history. The former DeMatha prodigy still ranks in the NBA’s top 30 in career points, free throws and field-goal percentage. He made six All-Star games, won a pair of scoring titles and was the rookie of the year in 1977. Over the past 35 years, just two players have averaged at least 30 points four seasons in a row. One of them owns the Hornets and stars in internet memes. The other one whistles middle schoolers for traveling violations.

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This was never one of Dantley’s career goals. He wanted to win an NBA championship (that didn’t happen) and to make the Hall of Fame (he was inducted in 2008). He wanted to live to the age of 100 (working on it) and to become an NBA head coach or general manager. He went 11-8 as Denver’s acting head coach in 2010, when George Karl was ill, but was dismissed from his job as a Nuggets assistant in 2011. After nearly a decade in that profession, he has no interest in a comeback.

“I’ve done it enough; I like doing what I’m doing now,” he said. “You can’t be honest when you’re a coach. That’s the point. Maybe a few coaches can be honest, but to get to that level, you’ve got to play the game.”

That’s something Dantley often refused to do during a seven-team, 15-year career known both for brilliance and bluntness. “I always think if I’d been a con man, I’d probably have been a little more successful,” he once told The Post’s Ken Denlinger.

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The men in stripes, though, don’t have to play such games. Dantley said he started refereeing about three years ago for the exercise. (“I want to live long,” he explained.) The more games he worked, the more interested he got.

“He is a very focused person,” his wife said. “And whatever it is that he focuses on, he wants to be the best he can be at it. That same kind of thinking that made him such a great basketball player makes him a great crossing guard, and makes him a great official. … He has a reputation to uphold.”

Dantley hasn’t been assigned a high school varsity game yet — “I guess it’s a situation where you’ve got to wait your turn, so I’m waiting my turn,” he said. Even outside of the gym, he began studying the craft: the proper mechanics, and how to get in the right position to make accurate calls.

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“It’s funny now: When I watch the games, I’m watching three referees more than I’m watching the players,” Dantley said. “I would have never thought that would happen to me.”

There are also modest paychecks — “he wouldn’t be doing it if he wasn’t getting paid, but he’s not doing it for the money,” his wife said — and the workouts. If a day of refereeing hasn’t felt strenuous enough, he’ll go home and do up to 90 minutes of cardio. Many days, he also runs five miles and lifts weights. Then there are those full-court one-on-one games, a favorite of Dantley’s since high school. Yes, he presses.

“If I pick someone up full court and I can make them turn two or three times, I’ve done my job,” Dantley said. “Whereas when they score, they run back to the foul line. I always say, ‘Why are you running back to the foul line? Why don’t you pick me up?’ Because if they did, they wouldn’t be able to last.”

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Dantley has no plans to leave his hometown; Washington, he said, is “the only place to live.” To his own surprise, he’s been wondering how far he could progress in refereeing, and whether he might be able to move up to the college ranks.

“I’ll probably do this until I die,” he said, “this and the crossing guard.”

Meantime, local kids raised on Steph Curry and Klay Thompson have been receiving a blast of NBA history during their weekend runs. Coaches tell their charges how they used to watch Dantley play. (“I said, “Y’all don’t even know who that is right there — he’s a Hall of Famer!” recalled Fontaine Green, one local coach.) Parents stare when they notice him in local gyms. (“I was at my older son’s game and I did a double-take and thought to myself, ‘Wait, that’s AD!'” said Joe Farren.) Fellow officials get asked about their celebrity partner. (“The kids love him, the parents love him, and he’s first class,” said Sandra Adinah Grant, who worked a recent game with Dantley.)

Just don’t expect a lot of cheap calls.