What is an "Air Dribble?"

[Spence]

A1 cutting to the basket and A2 passes him the ball. A1 while running bobbles the ball without having caught it cleanly. He then gains control and scores.

As I'm coming back down bench side, opposing coach tells me "That's illegal. That's an air dribble." He says he reffed for 5 years and he knows that's illegal.

I explained that a)I know nothing about an air dribble and b)can't be a travel if control was not established. He kept going back to the air dribble.

As you can imagine, we were finished at that point.

[Mark Padgett]

An "air dribble" occurs when a dribbler releases dribble into the air. It is not illegal, just messy. See below.

[shishstripes]

Little bit of a HTBT play, but sounds like you have a ball being fumbled, there's no control. Any steps taken while the ball is being fumbled do not count towards a traveling violation.

[Spence]

Originally Posted by shishstripes

Little bit of a HTBT play, but sounds like you have a ball being fumbled, there's no control. Any steps taken while the ball is being fumbled do not count towards a traveling violation.

Oh that's exactly what I had and that's the explanation I gave.

[stmaryrams]

Had something similar the other night. I always remembered the rule of you can fumble, dribble, fumble but not dribble, fumble, dribble without a violation

[LeeBallanfant]

Back in the old days, you could start a dribble by taking the ball from one hand then throwing in air to other hand and then tap it to the floor all the time while moving. This was eventually outlawed so there is where the disallowed air dribble comes in.

[Camron Rust]

Originally Posted by Spence

A1 cutting to the basket and A2 passes him the ball. A1 while running bobbles the ball without having caught it cleanly. He then gains control and scores.

As I'm coming back down bench side, opposing coach tells me "That's illegal. That's an air dribble." He says he reffed for 5 years and he knows that's illegal.

I explained that a)I know nothing about an air dribble and b)can't be a travel if control was not established. He kept going back to the air dribble.

As you can imagine, we were finished at that point.

There once was an air dribble. It was the batting of the ball up into the air repeatedly without letting it hit the floor. In the beginning, the rule only said you couldn't run while holding the ball. So, clever players invented the air dribble. It was made illegal sometime after that as it was a nearly indefensable method of moving the ball down the court.

The question in your case was whether it was an air dribbler (a contolled action) or a muff (no control).

[Nevadaref]

Camron is correct. The NFHS basketball handbook has a good description which I posted a couple of months ago.

http://forum.officiating.com/showpos...5&postcount=36