canuck
You are close - but there is no great truth out there waiting to be discovered by the observer. The rulebook can be used to back either observation of what occurred, and the observer must determine what they think they saw. That becomes what happened when the observer is the ref, opinion for everyone else
I believe that if the original dribbler pushed the ball far away and recovered it 20 feet down the court, few here would call it a continuous dribble. If A1 was able to step right around and recover the dribble just on the other side of B1, we would have many different opinions as to what was seen, and many more people would think that they had a continuous dribble than in that 20 foot example. And if the ref blows the whistle and calls it that way, that is what happened. If they pass and call it interrupted, that is the operative truth for this play.