[Scrapper1]

Originally Posted by Camron Rust

Here is what the rule says (4-23):

If the opponent is airborne, the guard must have obtained legal position before the opponent left the floor.

Note that it doesn't say anything about a spot or at the point of contact....just about when LGP must be obtained.

FINALLY!!! LOL. This is the obvious and the only rule-based objection to my position that really has any bite. I'm not sure it's fatal, but I've been waiting for 2 days for somebody to throw it in my face. I skirted my way around it in post #56, and nobody called me on it.

So now that Camron has called me on it, I'm going to try to say why I don't think it's actually a problem for me.

(I'm actually going to use Camron's own objection against him.)

4-23-4b does not talk about the point of contact. It only talks about obtaining a legal position. Camron's absolutely right about that. But he's wrong when he states that the rule addresses "when LGP must be obtained". It only addresses obtaining a "legal position".

The rule doesn't actually refer to LGP. "Legal guarding position" is a very specific term and is used explicitly for a specific purpose in Articles 2 and 3 of 4-23. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that if the rulemakers had intended LGP -- in that specific sense -- to be a consideration, they would have simply included the phrase in the rule, just as they did in Articles 2 and 3. Especially since they just discussed obtaining a legal guarding position in 4-23-4a. But they didn't do that.

I don't think it's talking about "obtaining an initial legal guarding position", because that's covered in 4-23-2. If that's what they were talking about, they could have included it as 4-23-2c. And they're obviously not talking about maintaining a legal guarding position (since the rule explicitly uses the word "obtained".)

So since the rule isn't talking about LGP, what does it mean to obtain a legal position? It just means to get to your spot on the floor without being out of bounds. And you have to get there before the opponent became airborne.

Am I stretching? Yeah, probably. But to me, this makes more sense than saying that it's not legal to move laterally into an opponent's landing spot but that it is legal to move backwards into an opponent's landing spot. That makes absolutely no sense at all, based on the rules. In fact, based on Camron's excellent post, even Jurassic would be compelled to say that it IS, in fact, legal to move laterally into an opponent's landing space. And as I said earlier, that is an unacceptable result.