[Old School]

What has happen here is a matter of you outsmarting yourself. You are hung up on the words, you have become too technical. There is another aspect of officiating bb you will not find in the rulebook. It's called the intent and purpose of the rule. The referee has the authority to make a ruling on points not specifically covered in the rules. It would be nice to be able to take every given situation that can happen in a game and relate it to wording in the book. However, that is not reality. For those that needs to be able to see this wording, looking for the next closes thing in the book doesn't make your point right, which may not be anywhere close to what actually happened. You then try to use this wording to confuse the issue. I think we all need to take a step back and think a minute about the intent and purpose of the rule. This is where you will find your answer.

And that answer is, you can not past the ball to yourself. I hear someone say a pass must be between teammates. Well this clever player, outsmarted you. He passed the ball to an invisable teammate, then went and recovered it himself, which was his intention all along. Quit saying he batted the ball, because this is not true. He did not bat the ball anywhere. He passed the ball to himself, a pass, he then went over there and caught it and shot. Illegal in all basketball associations, NBA, NCAA, and NFHS. You can not throw an alley-oop to yourself, unless it's at the slam-dunk contest.

Since the player went trick-a-dick, I'm gonna go trick-a-dick and tell the player, next time you make that move, please be sure and bring your suitcase because that was the nicest traveling move I've seen all year. If you want to say it's an illegal dribble, I will not argue that because the rulebook most closely matches that scenario. However, the rulebook also says a pass must be between teammates, so in the absence of another teammate to secure the ball before it hits the floor, we now have a violation of that rule or a turnover. And last, allowing a player to pass the ball to himself is too big of an advantage to the offensive player and not the intent and purpose of the rule.

Case closed.....