I"m not sure about the play you're referring to, but I do know that often the camera angle is 90% of the problem for us couch-view officials. Many times, when they show the same play from a different angle on replay, it's very, very clear what happened, or what the ref saw.

With regard to the OP, I think the answer is that the defender is usually giving ground. I don't understand why they do that. But it seems clear that unless the defender holds his ground, there isn't gonna be a call. It's gotta be a pretty clear shove or arm.

That was the Florida game where the poor defender got run over by Horford. In the last 5 minutes of that game (with Butler), he made no effort to go around or over his defender. He could have easily had 3 PC's in that stretch. If you notice on the video after each of those plays, he was flexing his arms as if to say, "I'm going through you and there's nothing you can do because the officials aren't calling it."

I'm wondering why the defender is not on equal footing with the offensive player? If the offense goes through a defender's space, it's a foul. If a defender goes through the offensive player's space, it's a foul. The 2 should not be looked at differently, even though they clearly are by the majority of officials.

Juulie - I just got some new ones. They're orange and glow in the dark! :eek:

Now - wasn't that a useful answer?

Thanks everyone...your responses were very usefulll.