Contact, Wait for It, Miss, Tweet.

[Jurassic Referee]

Originally Posted by zm1283

This garbage about waiting to see if the ball goes in and passing on a foul if it does is a reason why we as officials get a bad rap from outside observers. Quit trying to be so damn philosophical and just call illegal contact as it should be called. If the ball goes in in the situation in the OP, tough luck for Team B who fouled the shooter I guess. Maybe they'll learn next time.

In our area, we have been instructed to call illegal contact and throw "advantage/disadvantage" out the window. We are told that we will never get in trouble for calling fouls as opposed to "passing" on "marginal contact". Also, I VERY rarely if ever hear from coaches during games that we're calling the game too tightly.

My personal feeling is that it's more of a comprehension problem. They're confusing incidental contact with illegal contact.

We do have to decide if "marginal contact" is a foul. But when the contact occurs is the point where we have to decide whether that marginal contact was incidental or illegal contact. But that decision is solely dependant on the actual contact, not whether the ball went in or not after the contact. There's just too many factors involved to adjudicate the play that way...the athleticism of the shooter, the strength of the shooter, the determination of the shooter, etc. We should always be striving for calling uniformity for these types of plays from beginning to end and at both ends of the court. You can't possibly do that if there is a variation in the shooters with regards to their individual athleticism, strength, determination, etc. How can anybody possibly justify calling a foul on a play just because the shooter wasn't as strong as another player in muscling the ball into the basket after being similarly fouled with the identical contact on a play that was previously no-called?

We are also trying to get our guys to do exactly what you guys have been instructed to do. Decide whether the contact was illegal or not at the point of contact, and then try to call it that way uniformly at both ends from beginning to end.