[Camron Rust]

Originally Posted by Scrapper1

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.

I alluded to it in post 46...http://forum.officiating.com/basketball/58474-block-player-control-no-call-4.html

Originally Posted by Scrapper1

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".

In this case, the guarding is implied. Articles 4 & 5 are futher qualifying when how legal position can be obtain relative to the movement of the opponent. It doesn't not alter the obtaining/maintaining of LGP. The two are intertwined. If the player has LGP, then they also have a legal position. If they have legal position, they might have LGP depeding on other factors.

Originally Posted by Scrapper1

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.

All fine, but irrelevant.

Originally Posted by Scrapper1

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".)

In this case, both legal position and LGP were obtained prior to the shooter going airborne. There are no restrictions on maintaining legal position but there are on LGP. If B1 had legal position at the moment A1 left the floor, that is all that is required by 4-23-4b & 4-23-5d.

Originally Posted by Scrapper1

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.

But nowhere does it define that legal position is a fixed spot on the floor.

Originally Posted by Scrapper1

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.

Throw out the rules for just a moment and thing about whether it even makes sense. It doesn't. It goes against all logic.

Originally Posted by Scrapper1

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.

It does NO such thing. If the player has to move laterally to get into the path of an airborne player, they've already lost any LGP they had and they are trying to OBTAIN a legal position and LGP....which can't be done after the shooter goes airborne.