help out the writer

[Adam]

Originally Posted by dmotes

I'm curious about this bit on the pick, though. Is there any level of violence that, even if accidental or unintentional, is still a foul on the defender when defender meets pick? Or is the picking player "accepting" whatever befalls him? That's what I got from the post

If you want to have a realistic foul on this play in your fiction, then have the defender hit the screen and try to push on through it. A good screen is going to result in some legal contact, sometimes severe. However, if the defense doesn't stop on contact, it's a foul.

Originally Posted by dmotes

To restate q1 #1--now that I have the official go-ahead--maybe I'll be clearer. I know the officials have thought these things out. If ball is thrown the length of the court, how long does it take to pass from the top of the key to the basket? That's why q1 isn't irrelevant, I think; I need my time left to be enough so that the clock would have expired if the top-of-the-key player touched it, but also not so short that the guy at the hoop would have long enough to catch and shoot. Are there standard timings for some of these? (and of course I know that the officials call what they see, and anything is possible, and so on.) I'm a writer, and this is fiction, so I won't tell anyone that you speculated. If you understand the question.

We've thought it out, but not the way you suggest. We think about how to handle it, and we think about how many times to flog the timer when all is said and done. However, there isn't anything set in writing on this, not from on-high anyway. There's nothing official that states x number of seconds are required for a ball to travel that far. There's no way to know, because every player is going to throw the ball at a different velocity and trajectory. Without replay and a stopwatch, it's impossible to know.

Another issue with your scenario. If the defense hears the horn and stops defending, how do you allow the shot? You're really talking about an official's worst nightmare with this play.