Foul out of bounds

[btaylor64]

Originally Posted by slow whistle

Personally I think we have enough to focus on rather than worrying about all of the peripheral stuff. There needs to be an awareness of game situation to help you to direct your focus, but not to influence whether or not to make a specific call IMO. If you can process all of that information and use it to decide whether or not your fist goes up in that half second-second then more power to you, but I would rather take that stuff out of the equation and use my focus to decide whether or not a foul occurred.

That "peripheral stuff" is what separates a good referee from a great referee. If team A is getting hammered by 30 with 2 min left in the 4th and and team B is on offense and is driving to the hoop and A1 has his arms barely non vertical and it causes the player to miss the shot, are you gonna call a foul??? I would hope not, granted it is technically a foul you are just now shoving this already embarassing loss right up team A's butt and making it worse.

I think the play in the OP is a foul, but by taking into account time and score I would be ok with passing on a slight bump that caused the player to lose control of the ball as long as it is late in the 4th and there is no possible chance of the team coming back from 30 down. That is just good game management. I personally wouldn't factor the type of player that committed the act into THIS play in particular bc it is so late in the game just the time and score. I think the no call is a win-win. The coach who is up, more than likely won't say anything bc it is a blowout and the other coach gets the ball down 30!

I also believe if there is more than a slight bump and the player gets knocked down then you should probably take a foul. jmo