Shoulda taken that President of the United States job, even with the pay cut.
Nicer place to live, and interns at your beck and call, so to speak.

Folks, these players AREN'T out of bounds. They aren't jumping out of bounds to gain an advantage, they are jumping to a legal place (above oob) to gain a specifically allowed advantage. What about a player who sails oob after making a lay-up? Did he jump oob to gain an illegal advantage? No. how is this any different?

Really? They aren't jumping out of bounds to gain an advantage? They why are they jumping out of bounds? Why not stay on the court and make the pass? ;)

They ARE still inbounds when they make the pass. They aren't oob until they land. It's all legal, BITSy. All legal. Not just because someone wrote an exception, but because they aren't breaking any rules.

That part doesn't matter. What does is whether they left the court for an unauthorized reason.

Obviously the Fed doesn't want us to call it that way, and that's fine. I don't want to call it that way, so I'm actually happy.

But there is a rational argument to be made for why they should change that interpretation.

"Momentum" isn't an unauthorized reason. That's the same as it's always been. Why change the interp?

Cagers
 

The court was also ringed by something new to basketball — a 12-foot, chain-link "cage" separating players from fans.

"The Trentons had conceived the idea that a cage would make the game faster by stopping all out-of-bounds delays," wrote Marvin Riley, the referee at that historic game. "That cage was an object of both interest and sarcasm for a long time. It was called 'Trenton's monkey cage.'"

By the 1920s, the cage had been phased out of the game. Still, headline writers fell in love with the word as a synonym for basketball, and players are sometimes still called "cagers."

I believe a rational arguement could be made that when a player deliberately jumps OOB with control of the ball that it is not momentum.

I suppose it could, if the rule included the word "intentional" or "deliberate". But it doesn't. Using momentum doesn't seem to be against the rules. Momentim is a specific physical factor that doesn't have any moral judgment. whether a player "momentum"s on purpose or just gets "mometumed" by accident doesn't change the nature of the physics. And the rule book doesn't distinguish between those.

It's simple. You're inbounds until you land out of bounds. As long as you are inbounds you can do whatever you like. You can pass off and land in the balcony. If this rule was changed as some are suggesting, it would open a huge can of "he coulda stayed inbounds" worms.

So, what about when a player causes his "momentum" to take him OOB around a screen?

And am I doing a good job playing devil's advocate? :D

Not really.:D

In your what if, the play would be legal if she could get around the screen without touching the floor oob, ie, staying in the air. What are the chances?

Well, sure, but that would have nothing to do with the original play. In the original play, the problem has nothing to do with the ball and when/where it is passed. It has to do with the player ending up OOB. Why should it be any different if a player ends up OOB getting around a screen as throwing a pass around a defender?

Yes it does. The "problem" has to do with people mis-interpreting that the player is passing the ball from oob, when in fact that play happens from inbound space that is above the oob space.

Because the problem isn't that the player "ends up oob" to get around a screen. It's that the player is oob in the middle of the play and ends up inbounds again. That's the problem. Which is different from the OP where the player isn't "using" oob space to gain an advantage.

No, you're deliberately ignoring the point that in order to make that play the player will leave the court. And there is no "inbounds space" above the oob. That is complete nonsense.

Wrong again. The problem is that the player leaves the court at all. The fact that he/she came back inbounds later isn't the basis for the violation, nor does it have anything to do with "the middle of the play". It's the act of leaving the court that is a violation.

As has been pointed out ad nauseum, the play is legal. The NFHS has said it's legal. Individual interpreters have called it legal. Fair enough; that's how I will continue to referee this play. But to insist that how the Fed ruled is the only possible, logical, or reasonable way the situation can be viewed is quite simply baloney. :rolleyes: