Nevadaref |
Wed Aug 22, 2007 07:09pm |
For the record, I don't believe that either of the two plays which I posted are backcourt violations according to the rules as written. For this argument it is very important that people make the distinction between backcourt violations due to article 1 and those due to article 2. You can't mix parts of each and come up with a violation.
It is clear that 9-9-1 cannot be used to justify a backcourt violation in either case as no player from the offensive team touched the ball in the frontcourt before it went to the backcourt. That article very clearly states that this is required.
So if either of these cases were to be violations 9-9-2 would have to be the provision being broken. However, that article has two clauses in it that have particular bearing on these plays.
The first is that it states "... a player shall not ..." Thus the article is written as a prohibition on a single player, not against a team. It does not contain the word teammate at all. The team article is 9-9-1.
So I wrote the first case to have the ball return to a teammate of the passer, not the passer himself. Strictly that does not break 9-9-2.
The second clause of importance is "in the backcourt." Tony has correctly pointed out that the touching does NOT need to occur "in the backcourt" for a violation under 9-9-1, but for situations governed by 9-9-2, this certainly is a requirement. Thus the second play was carefully crafted to have the original passer retouch the ball in the FRONTCOURT instead of the backcourt. So again, the exact wording of the text has not been infringed.
The dribble defintion is something that I only briefly considered, and is why I wrote that the player had not previously dribbled.
I'm now wondering if 4-4-6 and it's interpretations have made it nearly impossible for a violation to be committed under 9-9-2. The only situation that I can think of is a player throwing the ball from his own backcourt off the backboard in his frontcourt and having it return to him untouched. That would be a violation because 4-4-5 says that this action is not a dribble.
For example, if a player is standing still in his backcourt a few feet from the division line and tosses the ball with backspin into the frontcourt where it bounces and returns untouched to the player who has not moved would that be a dribble and thus the ball never attained frontcourt status per 4-4-5 or would that be a violation of 9-9-2?
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