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Originally Posted by Brad
Yes, but contact during a dead ball is either incidental or technical / flagrant technical.
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UNLESS the contact is on or by an airborne shooter, which is the entire debate on this play.
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I am in the camp that states that a player who has completed a dunk and is still hanging on the rim on his way down does not really meet the spirit of the rule of "airborne player".
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Why in the world not?? What other reason is there for making an exception for an airborne shooter if it doesn't cover this situation? The ONLY way I can think of for an airborne shooter to commit a foul after the ball is dead is to do it after a dunk. Nobody's hang time is good enough to stay airborne until after a 15-foot jump shot goes through the basket.
So should we submit a rule change so that 4-1-1 reads that an airborne shooter is a player who has released the ball on a try and has not yet returned to the floor, but who has not grasped the ring? (That opens up a whole other can of worms for this play, btw.)
As I said previously, I can actually understand why we'd want this to be a dead ball contact technical foul. It is the "expected" call. It's like calling one foul instead of a multiple foul. You could be technically right in calling a multiple foul, but nobody does; and it would be a major headache if you did. But at least in that case, you have rule support for calling one foul (after all, the player who gave the foul to did commit a foul). And to be completely honest, in the heat of the moment, I might actually forget that he's an airborne shooter because of the unusual circumstances.
But in the video play, you actually don't have rule support for a technical foul.