If you can provide ANY rule support for that distinction, I will immediately drop the argument. As far as I can tell there is none. The only rule that I know of, that discusses legal position on an airborne player, is the one I've already quoted twice; and that rule says that the defender must be at the point of contact before the opponent became airborne. It makes NO distinction between laterally or backwards; or between "in the path" and "to the side".

You have, as far as I can tell, NO rule support for your position stated above; whereas I have very clear rule support for mine. I love it when that happens. :)

4-7-2a: A player who is moving with the ball is required to stop or change direction to avoid contact if a defensive player has obtained a legal guarding position in his path.

NFHS rule 10-6-9-- "When a dribbler in his/her progress is moving in a straight line, he/she may not be crowded out of that path, <font color = red>but if an opponent is able to LEGALLY OBTAIN A DEFENSIVE POSITION IN THAT PATH, the dribbler must avoid contact by changing direction and or ending his/her dribble.</font>"
Isn't that exactly what happened in Zooch's scenario?

NFHS rule 10-6-10--"<font color = red>The dribbler is NOT permitted additional rights in executing a jump try for goal,</font>, feinting or in starting a dribble."

Excellent reference. Two things to say about it.

1) While it's very clear regarding the requirement of the offensive player, it does not address the distinction that Jurassic is trying to make. He's saying it's illegal to move laterally into the landing spot of an airborne player but legal to move backwards into the landing spot of an airborne player. I disagree with him on that, and your reference does not address any such distinction.

2) Clearly, the offensive player is required to stop or change direction if the defensive player has obtained a legal position in his path. So now we need to ask whether that defensive player has a legal guarding position on the airborne player under discussion.

Well, how does one get a legal guarding position on an airborne player? According to 4-23-4b, which I've quoted twice and referenced about 10 times in this thread, the defensive player has to get to the spot BEFORE the opponent becomes airborne.

So if the offensive player becomes airborne and then the defensive player continues to move, the defensive player does NOT have a legal guarding position on the airborne player. Therefore, 4-7-2a doesn't apply.

Sigh. I'm not talking about a dribbler. I have never been talking about a dribbler. I am talking about an airborne player.

Again, I'm not talking about a dribbler. I don't care at all in this thread about the dribbler. Forget the dribbler. I understand that the very first post in the thread was about a dribbler. I changed it to include an airborne player and that's what I've been discussing for 4 pages now.

Neither of those rules is germane to the discussion.

scrapper, in that rule, the dribbler becomes airborne when he executes a "jump try for goal."

Correct, but all that means is that the dribbler is not allowed to contact the defender in order to jump. (Picture "leaning in" with a shoulder to slightly push the defender back, then jumping to attempt the try. This is a very common method of "creating space" for the shot.) The rule is NOT talking about a player who is already airborne. That's clear by calling the player a dribbler, rather than an "airborne shooter".

Scrappy, I'm still waiting for you to cite me a rule, any rule, that says a defender can lose a legal position in the direct path of an offensive player by simply backing straight up. And note that the defender with the legal position on the court in the direct path of the offensive player was backing up before the offensive player went airborne.

Here is what the rule says (4-23):

Guarding is the act of legally placing the body in the path of an offensive opponent.

Is there any time in this situation that the player is not in the path?

It also says (about OBTAINING position)....

If the opponent is airborne, the guard must have obtained legal position before the opponent left the floor.

Note that it doesn't say anything about a spot or at the point of contact....just about when LGP must be obtained. This is in the section about OBTAINING position. Do you agree that the player in this situation has LGP before stepping back? Did the player obtain initial LGP? Yes.

It also says (about MAINTAINING position):

After the initial legal guarding position has been obtained: The guard may move laterally or obliquely to maintain position....

I can find no place that says this rule no longer applies once a player is airborne. The only rule regarding airborne players is in regards to OBTAINING initial position.

For a player that has LGP, this rule allows a defender the freedom of movement. In particular, it allows rearward movement even when guarding an airborne player. Any other movement would imply the defender was no longer in the path of the airborne player and, as a result, the defender no longer had LGP to maintain....movement would be in order to re-obtain a LGP...which is not allowed after the opponent is airborne. (Some lateral movement could be legal as long as B1 was already in A1's path where such movement would either be insignificant or would take B1 out of A1's path).

FINALLY!!! LOL. This is the obvious and the only rule-based objection to my position that really has any bite. I'm not sure it's fatal, but I've been waiting for 2 days for somebody to throw it in my face. I skirted my way around it in post #56, and nobody called me on it.

So now that Camron has called me on it, I'm going to try to say why I don't think it's actually a problem for me.

(I'm actually going to use Camron's own objection against him.)

4-23-4b does not talk about the point of contact. It only talks about obtaining a legal position. Camron's absolutely right about that. But he's wrong when he states that the rule addresses "when LGP must be obtained". It only addresses obtaining a "legal position".

The rule doesn't actually refer to LGP. "Legal guarding position" is a very specific term and is used explicitly for a specific purpose in Articles 2 and 3 of 4-23. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that if the rulemakers had intended LGP -- in that specific sense -- to be a consideration, they would have simply included the phrase in the rule, just as they did in Articles 2 and 3. Especially since they just discussed obtaining a legal guarding position in 4-23-4a. But they didn't do that.

I don't think it's talking about "obtaining an initial legal guarding position", because that's covered in 4-23-2. If that's what they were talking about, they could have included it as 4-23-2c. And they're obviously not talking about maintaining a legal guarding position (since the rule explicitly uses the word "obtained".)

So since the rule isn't talking about LGP, what does it mean to obtain a legal position? It just means to get to your spot on the floor without being out of bounds. And you have to get there before the opponent became airborne.

Am I stretching? Yeah, probably. But to me, this makes more sense than saying that it's not legal to move laterally into an opponent's landing spot but that it is legal to move backwards into an opponent's landing spot. That makes absolutely no sense at all, based on the rules. In fact, based on Camron's excellent post, even Jurassic would be compelled to say that it IS, in fact, legal to move laterally into an opponent's landing space. And as I said earlier, that is an unacceptable result.

I'm going to say that the rules have a lacuna: they don't say how a defender may maintain legal position while the shooter is airborne. Scrapper says this can be done only by staying put; JR et al. say that this can be done also by retreating.

Let's request a new rule. :)

Bottom line: If the defender is on the floor in the path of the offensive player when the player becomes airborne, and the defender's only movement is directly away from the offensive player, it is impossible for this defender to commit a blocking foul, whether he ever had legal guarding position or not.

This is true (in NFHS rules), although I'm not sure why it's the bottom line. . . :)

Because Stone Cold JAR said so!

I'll put it this way. If the defender is on the floor in the path of the offensive player when the player becomes airborne, and the defender's only movement is directly away from the offensive player and you call a block your supervisor will not be happy.

I am unable to locate "landing spot" in my rule book. Yet it figures prominently in the 90% block argument. Certainly we use the phrase "landing spot" often to explain certain fouls to players/coaches. But unless I'm missing something (and it wouldn't be the first time), "landing spot" is not a rules-based consideration.

What is a consideration is "If the opponent with the ball is airborne, the guard must have obtained legal position before the opponent left the floor". Clearly the player in Scrappy's scenario obtained legal position before the opponent left the floor. He also obtained LGP, which grants additional rights beyond mere "legal position". One of those rights is the right to move, within prescribed limits, to maintain position. Movement backward, away from the opponent, and in the same path is clearly within those limits.

So if the guard obtained legal position before the shooter left the floor, and he did not move toward the opponent when contact occurs (thus going outside the prescribed limits on movement to maintain)...how is this a block? Did he do something to lose legal position? If so, what? It can't be about "landing spot".

I alluded to it in post 46...http://forum.officiating.com/basketball/58474-block-player-control-no-call-4.html

In this case, the guarding is implied. Articles 4 & 5 are futher qualifying when how legal position can be obtain relative to the movement of the opponent. It doesn't not alter the obtaining/maintaining of LGP. The two are intertwined. If the player has LGP, then they also have a legal position. If they have legal position, they might have LGP depeding on other factors.

All fine, but irrelevant.

In this case, both legal position and LGP were obtained prior to the shooter going airborne. There are no restrictions on maintaining legal position but there are on LGP. If B1 had legal position at the moment A1 left the floor, that is all that is required by 4-23-4b & 4-23-5d.

But nowhere does it define that legal position is a fixed spot on the floor.

Throw out the rules for just a moment and thing about whether it even makes sense. It doesn't. It goes against all logic.



It does NO such thing. If the player has to move laterally to get into the path of an airborne player, they've already lost any LGP they had and they are trying to OBTAIN a legal position and LGP....which can't be done after the shooter goes airborne.

Correct. The key factors are being in the path of the opponent and having obtained legal position before the opponent goes airborne.

You are making an error in writing "a" before "legal position," as that implies a particular location. Please note that the rule does not have this article and only requires the defender to have obtained "legal position," which entails placing his body in the path of the opponent. The defender doesn't have to get there, as you write, rather he can be anywhere along the path. That's fundamental to correctly understanding this play.

A player who must move laterally to reach the location where an airborne opponent will land and cause a crash would not have been in his path and thus didn't have legal position. However, a player who moves directly backwards did have his body in the path of the opponent prior to him leaving the floor. That is how I can rationalize a difference in ruling on these two actions.

There is no way that the intent and purpose of the rule is to penalize a defender for stepping backwards after an onrushing opponent jumps towards him. For the rules to state that it would be a foul on the defender in this case would not maintain the carefully crafted balance between the offense and the defense which the NFHS states the rules are intended to create.

Isn't that what happened in the play below?

Are you saying that B1 falling kills the deal? If he had stood still and A1 had done the same thing, it would have been PC? If he had stepped backward prior to the crash, it would have been PC?

So. . .

B1 establishes a LGP on A1, who is dribbling. A1 moves laterally in an attempt to dribble around B1. B1 is able to move laterally back into A1's path and contact occurs on B1's torso. Can we agree that this is a player control foul? I think so.

Now. . .

B1 establishes a LGP on A1, who is dribbling. A1 jumps laterally in an attempt to release a try. B1 is able to move laterally back into A1's path and contact occurs on B1's torso (before A1 returns to the floor). You guys are saying that this is a blocking foul (which, of course, it is).

How do you justify the difference? B1 was originally in the path of A1 in both plays. A1 took a different path in both those plays. B1 was able to get back into the path before the contact in both those plays. B1 was not moving toward A1 at the time of contact in either play. Yet one is a PC and one is a block. Why?

It seems you're both saying that B1 maintains LGP on a dribbler who changes paths but LOSES his LGP on a player who changes paths by jumping, as I've highlighted in red above. Is there any rule basis at all for such a distinction? :confused:

Yes. PC

Yes, as long as the lateral movement by the defender came AFTER A1 jumped.
100% agree. The dribbler is not airborne and this allows BY RULE the defender to move laterally or obliquely to maintain legal position as the offensive player changes his path.
However, the rules are different after a player becomes airborne. (These rules have already been quoted and you know them anyway.) If the defender was in the airborne player's path before he left the floor, then he is fine, and doesn't have to relinquish that position (other than not moving forward), but if the airborne player picked a new path and jumped in that direction which is NOT the one along which the defender currently is, then the defender has to let him go. The defender cannot slide over to get in this new path AFTER the opponent has become airborne. Any illegal contact caused by doing so would be the fault of the defender.

It's really that simple.

If B1 is not in A1's path, B1 has lost LGP whether it is against a dribber or an airborne player. In the dribbling case, B1 re-obtains a new LGP when they get back in A1's path. By doing so, it is a PC. In the airborne case, B1 can not legally re-obtain LGP since A1 is airborne....thus it can only be a block.

It is possible that B1 could either continuously maintain LGP or lose it and re-obtain LGP against a dribbler.

As I've said, there's a gap in the rules: they do not specify how one can maintain a "legal position" (or, alternatively, how one loses it) after the shooter goes airborne.

One side of this conversation maintains that any movement by the defender entails loss of LP; the other side maintains that some movement is permitted (namely backward).

Without clarification from NFHS regarding what's missing from the rules, this debate is rationally irresolvable.

Ok, I think that I do know the rules, but honestly don't know how you justify this particular claim. Where is the rule that says LGP is lost immediately when an offensive player jumps laterally? That's an honest question, and not intended to sound snooty.

This is simply false. When a dribbler changes path, a defender who has obtained an initial LGP can "maintain" that LGP by moving laterally. (4-23-3c) They don't lose it and re-establish it.

The defender may indeed move to maintain LGP but that requires they stay in the opponents path while doing so. If the dribbler completely goes a new direction such that the defender is, even for a moment, not in the dribbler's path (the direction the dribbler is moving), the defender has lost LGP. That is the basic definition of guarding....you must be IN the path. If the defender doesn't meet the requirements of basic guarding, they certainly don't have LGP. Many times, the defender is able to keep up with the dribblers movements and is able to remain in the path continuously, but that is not always the case.

Respectfully, I think you're incorrect on that point, Camron. 4-23-3c clearly says that the defender maintains his position (which is a LGP, according to the previous article), by moving laterally.

Additionally, a defender maintains a closely guarded count even when the defender is not directly in the dribbler's path. By your reasoning, as soon as the dribbler moved laterally, the count should stop. (If he's not in the path, then he's not guarding; so how can he be closely guarding?)

Also, when the dribbler moves away from the defender, the defender does not need to move "in his path" to maintain LGP. That would require the defender to move around to cut him off.

And where might I read sumthin' that says a defender loses his position(LGP) by moving straight backwards while never leaving the direct path of the offensive player?

Rules citation, please.

The 2009-2010 Points of Emphasis Bulletin further clarifies what a defender can do to maintain his LGP.


4. BLOCK/CHARGE. The obtaining and maintaining of a legal guarding position on a person with and without the ball has been a point of emphasis over the years, but yet, remains one of the most difficult plays to coach and officiate.

A. The basics. To correctly understand the guarding rule, the following points are critical:

1) To obtain an initial guarding position on a player with the ball, the defender must get to the spot first without contact, have both feet touching the floor, and initially face the opponent. (not in dispute here)

2) Once the initial guarding position has been obtained, the defender may move laterally or at an angle or backwards in order to maintain a legal guarding position. Keep in mind that when a defender obtains an initial position with both feet touching the floor and facing his/her opponent, the defender need not be stationary but may continue to move in order to stay in front of the person with the ball. (clearly defines that movement at an angle or backwards movement is permissible to maintain LGP)

3) Once the defender obtains a legal guarding position, the defender may raise his/her hands in a normal stance or may jump vertically within his/her vertical plane. (not in dispute here)

4) A defender may turn or duck to absorb the shock of imminent contact. (not in dispute here)

5) A player is never permitted to move into the path of an opponent after the opponent has jumped into the air. (If a players already has LGP, then he is already in the path of the opponent. His backward movement is not moving into the path.)

Good find, asdf.

For the the tenth time or so, it's quoted in post 56. The defender must have his legal position (but not "a" legal position, apparently) BEFORE the opponent goes airborne. If the defender is moving after the opponent is airborne, then he doesn't have position yet, does he?

In any case, I'm leaving for two weeks vacation. So I'm afraid that I'm done with this discussion for a while. Everybody have a safe celebration on the 4th.

Irrelevant. And whether that is true or not really would never matter. When the dribbler moves away from the defender, there is no point in LGP as it would be impossible for their to be a collision where LGP would come into play. The only time LGP matters is when the dribbler is moving towards the defender.

Actually he does. What it doesn't say is that he has to maintain the same position. Nothing says the defender has to be stationary...just that they already have position. If they have legal position, why can't they move?

Before you go, be sure to post your street address and leave a key under the mat. Thanks. :cool: