secondary defender = leads call

You can draw hard lines if you want to but in this case it is going to lead to less than optimal coverage....and the wrong call.

Normally, the C is covering rotating defenders because the C is not on ball. Not having the ball gives the best view of players rotating from thier primary towards the ball. But, once they have ball coverage their view of rotating defenders necessarily diminishes....they can't reliably watch two things at once....that is why an off-ball official is usually tasked with covering the rotating defenders.

If you want to claim the defender was in and coming from the C's primary, then the C had 6 players in his primary, 4 at the point of the ball with a soft on-ball screen, the spot up shooter and the defender who took the charge. The player that took the charge was the 3rd defender in the play.

There was another isolated defender under the basket and an isolated offensive player on the opposite perimeter...no need for anyone to watch them. The last pair was just outside the lane opposite and were not engaged. No need for both the T and the C to be watching those....4 eyes on one non-competitive matchup and 2 eyes on 3 competitive situations. That just doesn't make sense.

The C should have recoginzed that he was overloaded and, regardless of who was C, T, or L, acted as if he were the T and trusted his partners to be covering the 3rd defender coming into the play late...that is why there are 3 officials. The boundaries of coverage should not always be dictated by the lines on the court but by where the players are. Even the T had a better chance of getting that call right. In a 3-man game, no official should be trying to cover 6 players while on-ball.

Now, what really should have happened....the lead should have rotated, freeing up the C to slide up to T and only worry about the on-ball activity. However, if you believe the defender had come from the C's primary as it was called, then the defender would have been in the T's primary if they had rotated. If he had been T instead of C, he'd have still got it wrong for the same reasons. Untimately, the C needed to realized he had too many players to cover well and let his partners get it.

Once A1 put the ball on the floor all those other players belonged to the T and L. B1 immediately stepped away and B2 slid down from the top of the key. The Lead was looking across the paint to the 2 engaged players (meaning he should have rotated). His head did not turn until A1 and B2 crashed. The Lead guessed right. And B2 still had right foot entirely outside the paint on the C's side of the court and his left was partially outside the paint when the crash occurred. He simply got the play wrong.

I don't subscribe to it either. :D