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With respect to dribbler, legal guarding position
must be obtained. Time and distance are not relevant. All you have to do is get two feet on the floor facing the dribbler in the path. Then, indeed, if you maintain that position in front of the dribbler and contact is caused by the dribbler in the area from shoulder to shoulder, it is a player control foul. The defender need not have any feet on the floor . . .
With respect to a MOVING situation away from the ball, time and distance are the issue. Sure, don't have the right to land in front of a moving player if he doesn't have a CHANCE to change direction - and that may be as much as 2 steps.
All that being said, the example I started with, and a number of others, are expressive of an interesting, implied rule - a meta rule. All axiomatic systems have to have such things. In this case it is the 'right to land'. I'm sorry I was hasty and didn't restrict the conditions explicitly to begin with.
Think about two stationary players. One leaps forward. Can another run and get to the putative landing spot first 'legally'? No. A practical instance of this are things like a player leaping forward to catch an inbounds pass and a defender, stationary at the time the leap is made, running under the player. And it happens often, and is very hard to see correctly, in rebounding situations.
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