These Kids Are So Damn Quick ...
 

When asked about the most difficult calls in basketball, many officials will point to the block/charge. Others will talk about game management, and interactions with coaches. The answer is easy for me, traveling. Sometimes it's difficult to spot, and keep track of, the pivot foot, especially when the official is on the run. There are no easy words of wisdom, or reminders, to help one make the correct travel, or no travel, call, other than to just keep track of the pivot foot. It's difficult to do properly, but that's why we get paid the big bucks, to use our good judgment to do, properly, what we are trained to do.

Note: Big bucks here in The Constitution State is $91.32. Eat your heart out guys.

True, but he didn't. It was not even close.



Calling one that's not there is worse than missing one. I think practically everyone agrees on that. But is calling one incorrectly as bad as missing ten? I don't think so, and I think the ratio of ten to one may be conservative.
Somebody find/post an incorrectly called travel in an NCAA game.

Peer Pressure Means Nothing To Me ...
 

Count me in with everyone. How's that for taking a hard stand?

If you can't describe the reason for the call, then you shouldn't make it in the first place.

Justification ???
 

How about, "That spin move is a travel 100% of the time, so I just call it."?

Good reason for the call? That'll sure satisfy a questioning player, coach, athletic director, or assignment commissioner. Right?

Note: We're not using a blue font for sarcasm on this Forum, are we?

LOL. I sure as hell hope I have a better explanation than that.

How often do we explain a traveling call?

Not often at all. But I'm not going to make a call and hope the coach doesn't ask for an explanation. Because if it is the rare instance where he/she wants to know what I saw, and I respond with "I just call it", then I could be in for a world of hurt (so to speak).

BTW, I get asked by observers about calls like that all the time. So even if the coach doesn't ask, others might.

The point is that a traveling call is relatively black and white. He illegally moved his pivot foot in excess of the prescribed limits. In the OP if I see this player pick up his dribble at the free throw line while executing a pivot and wind up under the basket with both feet on the floor, I don't have to know exactly where and when each foot landed to know he traveled. Any discussion of this play with a coach would pretty much be a "No, he didn't!" "Yes, he did." kind of thing, and I'm not likely to get into that.

Honestly, I may miss this call, let alone be able to describe it. I just wouldn't feel comfortable saying anything other than "when he picked up his dribble his right foot was the pivot foot, which he then lifted and put back down on the floor before the pass".

I don't mean to say I'd look down on you for saying it that way, it just wouldn't feel definitive enough for others to accept it.

And I'm saying, in a case like this, you don't even have to know which foot was the pivot (you probably will) to call a travel. If he's on one or both feet holding the ball at the free throw line and winds up on both feet under the basket, and it obviously was not a jump stop, he traveled. If a coach wants to ask which foot was the pivot in this case, it doesn't deserve an answer.

Dumbfounded ...
 

When coaches ask me about a travel, which is seldom, I usually respond by identifying the pivot foot, right, or left, and then mutter something about, "in excess of the prescribed limit". The fact that I know which foot is the pivot foot, combined with some "rulespeak" mumbo jumbo, usually impresses them, and they shut up. Most coaches are expecting a response with some mention of steps taken, and when I don't respond in such a manner, it confuses them and takes them off their game. Coaches can easily get flustered, and lose their train of thought. Speechless coaches are so cute.

Most conversations I have about traveling involve the phrase "he gets two steps" at some point.

This play is the exact reason you need to know. It's not a travel until the right foot comes down. What if he dishes or releases a shot just before that? You're good enough to know the difference without knowing which foot is the pivot?

Quite frankly, I'm not all that worked up about any of this. Not a single person in the gym is screaming for a travel at this point and missing this is a minor thing in my world.

If he starts out at the free throw line with a foot on the floor and goes to the basket with a one, two count, when the second foot hits the floor it's a travel. If there's traffic in between or for whatever reason you can't tell left from right, it doesn't matter.