Base Line and Cheap Foul

[bwbuddy]

A couple of interesting comments I heard referees make to coaches this weekend, and I would like your comments (youth league, using high school rules):

1) Defense can't set up at the baseline in such a way that would leave no room for the offense to go between the defender and the baseline.

2) Even if the defense is set in the lane, feet planted with no movement, if the offensive player with the ball does a jump stop just to the left of the defender, but jumps in the direction of the defender to shoot, if shoulder-to-shoulder contact is made, it's a foul on the defense.

So, T or F?

[mick]

False and False.

[zebra44]

Give those guys the link to this website so they can get with the program.

[Hartsy]

Sometimes I just have to shake my head in wonder. Probably the same thing the coaches do when I blow the whistle.

Hartsy

[bwbuddy]

I had planned to refer them here, but am now reluctant due to the sarcastic nature of some of the responses.

[mick]

Originally posted by bwbuddy
I had planned to refer them here, but am now reluctant due to the sarcastic nature of some of the responses.

bwbuddy,
When asked for an answer, on rare occasion I will first ask, "Would you like me to be political or truthful?"
mick

---

I can handle the truth.

[ChuckElias]

Originally posted by bwbuddy
I had planned to refer them here, but am now reluctant due to the sarcastic nature of some of the responses.

buddy, where's the sarcasm in this thread? The suggestion to give them the link to the website is not sarcastic. Shaking one's head is not sarcastic (although it may show disdain in a different way).

Basketball officials have to be able to take a little criticism, especially when they're dead wrong, like the guys you mentioned in your first post. Thicken up that skin a little and you (and those guys you observed) can learn a lot here.

[bwbuddy]

Fair enough - we're just used to a little more constructive and helpful tone in my area. Any thing less, and we may lose a potentially good offical.

[cmckenna]

bwbuddy,

Are you sure you heard this correctly? Perhaps they were referencing the change to establishing legal guarding position that was brought out last year. That change states that the defense must have both feet in bounds to establish legal guarding position. Coaches in the past always taught players to "take away the baseline" by setting up with one foot out of bounds.

Perhaps that is what they were referncing.

[bwbuddy]

Thanks for the thorough and helpful response. I'm betting you're correct.

[cmckenna]

Just another note to my one above....

If the defender is set up this way, with one foot out, then they do not have legal guarding position in which case the dribbler could create contact with that defender and it will be a block.

If legal guarding position is established, both feet inbounds, you could have either a charge or a block. All the other rules of legal guarding position apply. Defender to the spot first, initially facing, no movement in to the dribbler etc....

[Edited by cmckenna on Dec 6th, 2004 at 02:52 PM]