Player starting to fall in anticipation of charge

[Cobra]

Originally Posted by Jurassic Referee

Actually you're completely wrong as per NFHS rule 4-45-5. Verticality applies to everyone on the court, including rebounding action when there is no offense or defense. And it applies to all legal positions, not just legal guarding positions.

No, I'm not wrong. To have verticality legal guarding position must be obtained.

Verticality applies to a legal position. Following are the basic components of the
principle of verticality:
ART. 1 . . . Legal guarding position must be obtained initially and movement
thereafter must be legal.

The definition of guarding is "Guarding is the act of legally placing the body in the path of an offensive opponent."

So in order in order to guard someone you must be on defense. The principle of verticality says legal guarding position must be obtained. The offense can't obtain legal guarding position so the prinicple of verticality only applies to the defense.

4-45-5 deals with the defender maintaining verticality and being fouled. It doesn't say anything about verticality applying to the offense.

Originally Posted by Jurassic Referee

including rebounding action when there is no offense or defense

Then how can there be goaltending or basket interference on the offensive team? Team control is not the same as being on offense. You obviously didn't read my post as I said that the rules should be changed to correct these problems.

And you might not want to argue with me about definitions anymore. Last week you didn't know the difference between a common foul and a personal foul and then now you don't know the definition of verticality nor the guarding definition.

Originally Posted by Back In The Saddle

So what then does 4-37-2d mean when it says: "To obtain or maintain legal rebounding position, a player may not:...Violate the principle of verticality."?

That is what I was saying. The rule states that a player cannot violate verticality and be in a legal guarding position. This is a problem under the rules as there is no team control during rebounding action so neither team is on offense or defense.

Offense and defensive teams need to be defined. The legal rebounding position needs to be changed to remove "verticality" and replace it with something about the vertical plane. The verticality prinicple could be changed instead but it would probably be easier to change the legal rebounding position rule.