Quote:
Originally Posted by JRutledge
And some things are philosophies. I believe and was taught early on in my career by some that officiating is like three legs. One leg is rules knowledge. Another leg is mechanics and the final leg is philosophy.
The "gather" is a philosophy that a lot of people subscribe to and will continue to subscribe to despite this conversation or your reference or interpretation of the rule. There have also have even been visual interpretations from the NF on this issue in their S&I Rulebook.
Now maybe for you this does not suffice and I am OK with that feeling you have. But the reason that people use philosophies is so that they are consistent in their application of a rule and sometimes with their judgment.
Forgive me but after working about 13 games in two days I cannot think of a single time where someone shot the ball and did not first "gather" the ball and move forward towards the basket. What often officials do is to not award shots because the player did not get off the floor, which you have officials say, "On the floor" as their justification for not ruling that a player is in the act of shooting.
Now this term I used is used by many at higher levels. If is not your understanding again, I am OK with that feeling. But there are no rules that are specific to what a habitual motion entails. But it seems like you cannot make that motion until you start to gather the basketball in an attempt to shoot the basketball.
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Everything which you wrote is good and helps provide quality discussion on this topic. It also probably is exactly what is desired from those in your area at the levels which you work. I'm not going to disagree with you, I will simply express that we may be discussing this point with different target audiences in mind.
To be clear, what I wrote in my previous post was strictly for the HS level.
This being the summer a large number of people are attending camps with college and NBA officals. They are paying good money to hear the instruction and thoughts of those people--what you refer to as philosophies.
The point which I desire to make crystal clear is that those philosophies may be fully appropriate at those levels of play, but can also be fully inappropriate for the local HS game on Friday night.
What concerns me is that people may substitute some of these philosophies for proper rule application. This happens frequently when things "trickle down" from the pro and college levels of play to the HS officials. The point which we have been debating about (when to award FTs and when not to) definitely falls into that area. The pro rules support a certain way of handling this, the college assignors have their specific instruction--such as the PAC-12 issued last year (a desire for more FTs to be awarded), and the HS level has its own standard. There is a danger in taking a philosophy heard at a camp presented by someone from one level and applying that in a game at another level. I've been to several of those clinics/camps and spoken to numerous officials at the NBA, D-league, and NCAA D1 levels. They all have excellent advice to offer. However, one needs to do his/her own thinking and own reading to determine if what was just heard will be useful at the level that individual is working.
Another concern of mine is that just because someone is consistent in calling a play a certain way, doesn't make that person correct or accurate according to the given rules source. A great example of this took place a few years ago when it was obvious that several NCAA officials followed their personal philosophies that a player could not have a legitimate defensive position under the basket and called blocking fouls or nothing, when the correct call per the NCAA rules at that time was a charging foul. This eventually forced the rules committee to change the rule and now the NCAA has a version of the pro arc on the floor near the basket. This was definitely a philosophy that trickled down from the pro game to the college game, which was not supported by the NCAA rules. The danger now is that HS officials are doing exactly what these NCAA officials did a few years ago and ignoring the NFHS rules. That makes things confusing for the players and coaches at the HS level, and the NFHS has even issued a statement that using individual philosophies is improper (POE a couple of seasons ago).