The make up of a good official

[ChuckElias]

Originally posted by crazy voyager
the defender is sticking in her arm in what is a light foul, this foul how ever causes the offensive player to fumble and commit a dribble error/travelling

A fumble is not a violation. Nor is it a violation to recover your own fumble. Sounds to me that you are not really sure what happened.

But if you are sure that the dribbler violated, then:

You have contact by the defender which put the dribbler at a disadvantage that is not intended by rule. This is a foul.

Even if you judge that the contact was slight, there is absolutely no rules justification for a held ball here. The held ball is for when you can't determine who touched the ball last before it went OOB. It is not an option when you can't decide if the contact was severe enough to warrant a foul call.

If you don't think the contact caused the violation, then just call the violation. If the contact was caused by a player on the team that's getting crushed, maybe you pass on the foul and call the violation. If you're not sure that there really was a violation, just let the whole play continue and tell the coach, "It was ugly, but there was no travel".

But the bottom line is, unless FIBA is drastically different from NF, NCAA or NBA rules in this respect, there's no justification for a held ball in your play.