Sitch A... A1 drives to the basket and goes up for a try, but misses the shot. A1's momentum carries him off the court, but immediately jumps back on the court and with one foot touching inbounds and the other foot in the air recovers the ball and life is fine again.... No violation

Sitch B... A1 driving down the sideline loses his balance and control of the ball. The ball remains in-bounds as A1 takes 2 steps out-of-bounds. A1 recovers and re-enters the court. With one foot on the court and the other in the air, A1 recovers the ball.

The situations seem similar... Are they treated the same? Or are there restrictions placed on A1 in Sitch B due to an interrupted dribble or loss of player control?

Seems like there would be no violation for being out-of-bounds and being the first to recover the ball since he didn't intentionally leave the court to gain an advantage. But would A1 be able to continue the dribble or would he just have to recover the ball and look for a pass or shot?

Sitch B. Legal. A1 may even continue the dribble depending on how A1 recovers the ball: two hands or hand under the ball means the dribble has probably ended. One hand and not under the ball means dribble has probably not ended.

Losing control of the dribble....interrupted dribble...is coincident with losing player control. As such, the only OOB violation possible on a player w/o player control is to touch the ball while having the player has an OOB status or for the ball touch OOB having been last touched by the player of interest.

You were right on Sitch A. I hate sitch B, though. The point is (as I understand it) that this is not an interrupted dribble (4.15.5 ball loose after deflecting off the dribbler ... or gets away from dribbler) and so there is no loss of player control. Since the player demonstrates player control by being first to touch the ball after returning inbounds, the ball is ruled OOB by that act. However, I can't support that interpretation by 4.35 and rule 7. There might be an explanation in the archives....

I see that Camron responded while I was looking up stuff. The issue becomes why did A1 leave the court. Camron also read this as an interrupted dribble while I did not.

I think we need a case book entry for this....

[Edited by Richard Ogg on Nov 12th, 2001 at 05:24 PM]

4-15-5
An interrupted dribble occurs when the ball is loose after deflecting off the dribbler <B>or after it momentarily gets away from the dribbler.</B> There is no player control during an interrupted dribble.

Just because the dribbler is able to retrieve the ball doesn't mean that it didn't momentarily get away from him.Being the first player to touch the ball when he come back inbounds does not mean that he never lost player control. It's definitely not a dribble, so if he steps back in and picks up his dribble, the loose ball is an interrupted dribble. But during the play, there is no player control and therefore, unless he touches the ball while he is OOB, the play is legal.