Most Misunderstood Basketball Rules

[BillyMac]

"MOST MISUNDERSTOOD BASKETBALL RULES"

I started working on this list back in March 2005, for a presentation that I was making to a college level basketball coaching class after I was asked to make a presentation on the most misunderstood basketball rules.

This is a list of basketball rules that are often misunderstood by coaches, players, and parents. I developed this list over the past twenty-five years, officiating thousands of basketball games, listening to erroneous comments from players, coaches, and mostly from fans, and thinking to myself, "I wish I could stop the game and explain the real rule to them". This list is not meant to train officials, but rather, it is meant to educate players, coaches, and fans.

For example. A player is dribbling the ball in the backcourt and a fan is yelling "three seconds". Or, a player is inbounding the ball and a parent yells "he's stepping on the boundary line". How many times have things like this happened to you? Don't you just want to blow the whistle, stop the game, and say "there can't be a three second violation until the ball is in the frontcourt", or "the player can step on the line, but not over the line".

Now that we're in kind of a "dead period" between our winter season and the new NFHS rules due to come out in a few weeks, I'd like to improve this list. I encourage your comments, suggestions, corrections, deletions, additions, etc.

Thanks to the following Official Forum Basketball web site members for their contributions in developing this list: bossref, Hartsy, Jurassic Referee, Camron Rust, Mark Padgett, Nevadaref, Mark Dexter, Dan ref, mdray, Jimgolf, elecref, Assignmentmaker, IREFU2, David M, JeffW, Back In The Saddle, rainmaker, and texaspaul.