Quote:
Originally Posted by HokiePaul
hmm... I watched it again. It hadn't even occured to me when watching it the first time that this might have been a pass. There was one offensive player in the area that is in position to attempt a rebound if it had been an airball, but I don't like to guess on violations. If I'm not reasonably sure a violation occured (travel, oob, backcourt, etc), I'm not calling something. I don't know how you can be "sure" in this case that it was a pass.
Now if this happened in the middle of the quarter, that's different. But in an end of game situation, a half court heave in the direction of the basket (that hits the basket as added evidence) ... I'm treating that like a shot.
On second look, a couple other thoughts:
1) We can't see the C in the clip. Would his signal (3 pt attempt or not) matter? Perhaps the T saw that the C did not signal a shot, and therefore called the violation.
2) If you're the C and you signal a 3 pt attempt, do you run over to the T and share this with them?
Again, not saying this happened since we can't see the C, but how do you administer something like this. If C signaled something that would make the T's call wrong by rule, what do you do? Is it still the T's call to change, even though the key factor (shot or no shot) occured in the C's primary?
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We're paid to make a judgement of what the player is doing in that case (or attempting to do). You can make a decision or look for reasons to avoid making the decision. Rationalizations for not blowing the whistle don't make it the right call. If that player were fouled as he was trying to throw the ball and it never got out of his hands (or was knocked askew such that it never got anywhere near the backboard) would you be putting them on the line for 3 shots? What was the player trying to do? That is what we're paid to determine. The definition of try does not include what the ball hits, only what the player is trying to do. It can even be a try when it hits nothing.
If it was with 1 second left, I'd tend to consider it a shot. However, when there is plenty of time for 2-3 passes or for the ball to bounce back as far as it did, I'm not assuming it was a shot unless it looks like a shot.