back court violation following an interrupted dribble?

[Camron Rust]

Originally Posted by just another ref

So now we're debating whether Camron's play describes an interrupted dribble or not. Does a "brief delay"="momentarily? This is often a problem when one tries to translate a play from the court onto paper. But I think we agree. If it was an interrupted dribble, this is a violation, whether the next touch is a catch or the resumption of the dribble.

The point of my play was to illustrate that the interrupted dribble may or may not affect the backcourt rule as some might expect. Specifically, a brief bobble of the dribble IS technically an interrupted dribble yet few would consider the backcourt violation of the ball bounced in the frontcourt on such a play. If so, by extension, it shouldn't matter how long the interruption is. Thus, if you're not calling a violation for the play I described, it would be inconsistent to do so in the original play.

I just don't think that the rules were written with this scenario in mind and no matter which way we look at it, it isn't going to be elegant and logical.

As I said above, I could come to either conclusion on this one and could probably support one direction as well as the other and wouldn't fault an official for either call on this.