Hawkk
I would buy that except I have heard that the reason for the rule had to do with baseline inbounds plays. In the case of a fan BB, it is easier to go over the top and get a pass to a player that on a rectangular BB would be hitting the back side of the BB. So something that would always result in a violation becomes legal with the fan BB.

Your explanation works for the front-to-back situation, but does not explain the back-to-front exception.

I understand what you're saying. And I agree with you.

My only point is that the folks who publish the rules also publish a diagram of a legal fan shaped backboard. That diagram shows two flat sides. Given that, from a rules perspective, it should be easy to define OOB as being "over the top, between the two flat sides." Which, in my mind, negates the geometry argument.

Having said all of that, I'm still really curious about what the real reason for the seeming inconsistency is :)

Heck, I can't explain everything!

Seriously, I can't think of a good reason for the back-to-front difference, other than that the difference was drawn because of the front to back. (In fact, if anything I would think the rule would go the other way in terms of back-to-front, as I thought the purpose of that rule was to prevent the OOB over the backboard pass for a dunk . . .) I'll stick with my guess that the rule evolved from the shot issue, and noone has bothered to think about whether the distinction really makes sense because of the decline in fan backboards.

damn
 

there was this one team that i coached against that fed ally oops over the back board 7 times during the game. I didnt not know this was illegal.

Damn we should have won that game

What's the "back-to-front exception??"

The exception for fan BBs goes both ways, that is, it applies to balls that go over the front to the back and over the back to the front. The fact that the fan BB is smaller could explain why they don't penalize a shot that goes over front-to-back, because it is much more likely to occur than with a rectangular BB. However, since on a rectangular backboard it is harder to go over the top, that same logic could be used to say you should never go back-to-front on a fan backboard because it would normally be hitting the back side of a rectangular BB.