[dansaintandre]

Yes, I read you comments about "purposely subjective rules".
I agree that the game demands subjectivity in several aspects of play. However, I believe that we do ourselves and the game a dis-service with the way we implement that subjectivity today.

I think the game would be better if we had a clean, objective statement saying "... if you do x,y,z we call these behaviors HOLDING ..." This statement does not say anything about the legality of that behavior, it only states clearly and objectively what constitutes a HOLD.

In a separate section of the rules, one then says something like "... HOLDING is permitted under p,q,r situations..."
and "... under d,e,f situations HOLDING is an TECHNICAL FOUL infraction ..." and "... under a,b,c situations HOLDING is a PERSONAL FOUL infraction ..."

The subjectivity now consists in identifying one of the listed situations. Rules annotations now can explain and clarify those situations. First-100-game officials can be taught to see the behavior separate from seeing the situations -- even from the safety of the stands. Once they are effective with "seeing", they can begin to worry about deciding if what they saw was an infraction.

I contrast the approach described above with today's learn-it-all-at-once approach that borders on teaching someone how to write a best selling novel.