Held Ball or Live Ball?

[shutupneff]

Originally Posted by just another ref

Still a judgment call. Was there a held ball followed by a travel? Or did the shooter draw the ball back and travel on his own?

It's really hard to say. In most of these cases (the ones that I did call held balls), the defenders' hands were on the balls the entire time until the offensive player was way off balance.

Imagine a play where A1 is holding the ball firmly in front of his chest. B1, while attempting to steal the ball, ends up pushing on the ball so forcefully that A1 goes straight down onto his behind. At no point does B1 have any control of the ball, and there is no tie up.

That's essentially the the type of held ball situation I was seeing, except that 95% of the time, A1 was starting to go up for a shot (in that full-bodied fling that young kids tend to use that puts the ball right in front of the defender for almost a full second).