Quote:
Originally posted by Nevadaref
Jeff,
Remember you are not basing your argument on the specific language in the Rules Book, but rather on some 4 point system that has been devised to help officials determine backcourt violations. Don't get caught up in language that is NOT in the book.
Your play is not a backcourt violation because Casebook play 9.9.1 Situation C part (b) says that it is legal.
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As I mentioned in my last post, the 4-point protocol for analyzing whether a play is or is not backcourt is widely used and useful. Many people have applied it to the questions in BktBallRef's quiz. In that quiz I think there may be at least one undecidable proposition, from a strict rules perspective, #6:
"Play #6 - A1 is straddling the division line, with his right foot in the FC and his left foot in the BC. He receives a pass from A2 who is still in the BC. A1 catches the pass, drops the ball which lands in the FC, then begins to dribble the ball while still straddling the division line. Is this a BC violation? Why or why not?"
Unless I am wrong, and of course I might be, the 4-point protocol adjudicates this play as backcourt, on the basis that A1 is the last player to touch the ball before it
enters the backcourt and the first player to touch the ball after it enters the backcourt.
True enough, Team A has team control. And indisputably the ball attains frontcourt status when it's dropped in the frontcourt. But the touch which makes A1 the last player to touch the ball before it enters the backcourt and the first player to touch the ball after it enters the backcourt is also the start of a whole new 'state', the dribble.
Does touch always dominate, like paper covers rock? I don't know. I know that catching a live ball in bounds does not constitute control in the case of a jump ball.
It would be a great (great as in making life easier, great as in fouls are taken in the order in which they occur) simplification if it were true that, in all cases, a simpler, elemental act like touching always set the precedence with which higher level rules should be applied. Catching is touching without end. Dribbling is touching plus . . .