fouled while "shooting" at wrong basket

[Mark Padgett]

Originally Posted by Texas Aggie

The "delayed backcourt violation" was a description and not a basketball term. In other words, what I was getting at was a play like this (make sure you are clear on what I'm saying):

Ball is in A's frontcourt. Everyone gets confused (start of the half, perhaps) and A1 goes from his frontcourt into his backcourt on a breakaway. B1 fouls A1 as A1 is going in for a layup. Referee signals foul while umpire comes running in and clears up the issue: A1 shot at his opponent's basket, so there's certainly no free throws or made shot. R/U talk and decide that the ball should have become dead when A1 committed the backcourt violation. That's where I'm putting the ball into play at the division line, B's ball. No foul.

An official can enforce a violation, even if he doesn't realize it immediately. All you have to say is, "coach, I got turned around, and then realized there was a violation prior to the foul." That wouldn't be any different than a trail coming in on a lead who just called a foul and saying, "the offensive player traveled before the contact." In the scenario above, it could be that the Umpire likely knew that A1 committed a backcourt violation, but wanted to confirm with the Referee that he or she was actually in their frontcourt first. Just because it would take a few more seconds doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.

OK - let's use an exaggerated example to make the point. Assume the foul on B1 was flagrant - he not only punched A1 in the tater tots, he then jumped up and down on the fallen body then took out a wet noodle and gave A1 40 lashes. Would you just ignore it and tell the coach you didn't catch the backcourt violation so the foul "doesn't count"?

What I'm getting at is that you can't make this call based on the severity or importance of what happened next. If you don't recognize and react to the violation when it occurs, you can't call it retroactively. If the rules wanted to allow you to do so, then this situation would be listed under correctable errors.