Travelling: What do you think of this?
 

Just received this as part of a longer email.

Using up time at end of a quarter or game when an offensive player, staying still, in essence throws the ball back and forth from one hand to another. It is the ending of a dribble each timethe ball goes from one hand to the other. Officials are observing the play and ruling this Illegal act as being Legal.

Got this too and I can't figure out what exactly they are talking about. Can't visualize the play they are talking about.

Legal play ...

Caseplay
4.44.3 SITUATION D:

(a) A1 tosses the ball from one hand to the other while keeping his/her pivot foot in contact with the floor; or (b) A1 throws the ball over the head of B1 and then takes several steps before catching it.

RULING: Legal in (a), but a traveling violation in (b). In (b), since the ball did not touch the floor, the tossing and subsequent catch is illegal. (9-4)

That's ridiculous. The definition of a dribble and how a dribble is started both include the phrase " to the floor" (or similar wording). Since the ball isn't being thrown/pushed/batted to the floor, it isn't an illegal dribble.

Who sent this email out? I certainly hope it was not an assignor or State Interpreter!:eek:

LOL ... probably a coach who wanted an illegal dribble called.

Agree. I hate when people send out such rulings from positions of the authority. It basically undermines just about any credibility they may have had when the exact case is in the books and has the exact opposite ruling.

"Dear sir:

Your email was apparently forwarded to me in error. I deal with Basketball, where the act you describe is legal.

Since you confidently state that the act is illegal, I can only assume that you were watching a sport other than basketball. If you let me know which sport that was, I will forward the email to the appropriate person."

I have heard over the years this example used by coaches to try to suggest that any fumble should be called a travel because they could not give a rulebook reason for why it was not a travel.

Peace

Coordinator of IAABO interpreters.

Holy.

Crap.

I would love to hear the reasoning being used in that interpretation if he/she ever explains it.

Ask'em what's illegal about the act.

A clarification has been requested from IAABO ... please stay tuned.

For us sutherners ... which state is the I in that? Iowa, Indiana, Illinois, Idaho? (Or is my USA-ism showing? Iraq? Iran? Ivory Coast? Iceland? India? Indonesia? Ireland? Israel? Italy? (Um ... I think that's all of them...))

More like International ... International Association of Approved Basketball Officials.

I'm guessing we'll see a retraction before an explanation.

I got the email, too, and emailed our local rules interpreter to see how we should be calling this here. ;)

I live in Virginia also, but fortunately I have not received such a ridiculous email. What are the origins?

i already sent my email to my interpreter with the case play as well as the wording about how a dribble is defined.

Will let you know when I hear back.

Came from IAABO directly. Check your SPAM.

I'm in Northern VA. As others stated, it was a mass email tied to IAABO. My association must have signed everyone else up, or I got on their mailing list somehow--still fairly new so not sure exactly.

Mark, Jr., and I received the same email this afternoon. The email came from IAABO Headquarters and was sent to all IAABO members. I cannot believe it was included because every basketball officials knows that this is not traveling.

MTD, Sr.

My boards are members of IAABO, but I personally am not. Keeps me from being assigned to games in Connecticut. :D

We'd Never Let You Past The Border ...
 

Varsity fee: $91.32. Added bonus: All the taxes that you could afford to pay, plus more.

Clarification from IAABO:

The item was not intended to address standing and tossing/throwing/passing the ball from one hand to another, which is legal. I am guilty of not being as clear as I had intended to be. I hope this effort clears your concern up. Very seldom do I observe a player standing and tossing/throwing/passing the ball from one hand to the other. The concern with officials and officiating is that they watch a player begin and end 4, 5, 6, 7, dribbles and do not rule a violation.....I see that on a very regular basis. The situation in the memo was intending to address the player who begins a dribble by throwing/bouncing the ball toward the opposite hand and"catches"/palms the ball, which ends the dribble.
Situation:
End of quarter & end of game...little time remaining. Team wants to consume some time prior to progressing. Usually the "point Guard" has the ball he/she:
Bends his/her knees, bends at the shoulders, instead of standing and holding the ball. Player pushes/bounces the ball from one hand to the other hand,
palms the ball, ball comes to rest in/on a hand/ (ends the dribble) should be ruled a palming violation. Player immediately he/she pushes/bounces the back to the original hand. Palms the ball. Ball comes to rest in/on the hand (ends this second dribble). At times this action continues several times. Officials simply observe and rule this illegal repeated act as being legal.

Smells like...CYA.

I'm with Welpe.

Wish they had a video example of what is seen "on a regular basis" that officials are missing. I tried to find an example on video somewhere and all I could find was this exagerated example of what I think they are talking about(first 10 seconds).
<iframe width="420" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/ICiuIiVq08k" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

And a poor one to boot....

The clarification is just as wrong as the original release. :eek:

EDIT...unless he was trying to say this was just a simple dribble with a lot of carries but pushing it to the other hand doesn't sound like a dribble.

Interesting clarification...I basically read it as

"Oops. After having several hundred of you tell me I am wrong, what I really meant was this situation which is entirely different from what I sent out before."

And, even in the clarification...I honestly don't think I have ever seen any player doing this so exaggeratedly that it needed to be called.

The clarification references "bouncing" so I think he's trying to say it's a situation of repeated dribbles with the dribbler grabbing the ball with one hand between a few dribbles.

Frankly, I've never seen this, and it's a stretch for me to think it is what he meant in the initial email.

I haven't seen his clarification, however: only the initial email.

I've never seen the action described in the clarification - not once. And I'm with Rocky on the explanation of the unclear clarification.

It's from a long, rambling e-mail
 

This is from a rambling email sent to IAABO members in which he claims as many as 66 calls a night (or one every 36 seconds) are being blown in your typical game.

Here are some of the other points in this missive:

"Substitution – substitutes are not to be admitted (beckoned-in) until the Timer sounds the HORN. The Official Scorer & Timer determine when a substitute should be admitted/beckoned-in. Don’t override the Scorer & Timer."

Yes, boys and girls. The home team, through its employed, untrained scorer, gets to decide when substitutions are allowed. So if the home book decides it's inappropriate for the high scoring visiting player who has been sitting with 4 personals to come back in with the game tied and 2 minutes left, we're supposed bow to their untrained wisdom, even though Official Scorer & Timer [sic] is never mentioned in 3-3. Neither, for that matter, is the horn. On the basis of this I presume that the Official Scorer & Timer (such as some of those who have posted here over the past couple of years) should also have sole responsibility for calling T's for not reporting.

Apparently, we just plain stink when it comes to fouls...

"*Observations find very obvious 2-3 dozen contact situations per game where Illegal contact
is ruled as being Legal (no-whistle) or Legal contact is ruled as being Illegal contact (wrongly penalized by inaccurate ruling)."

And we're not so hot on traveling either...
"*Observations find upwards of 20-30 situations per game where Legal use of the pivot foot is rule Illegal and Illegal use of the pivot foot ruled Legal. The result is a possession lost when it shouldn’t be and a possession maintained when it shouldn’t be. SERIOUS INJUSTICE!!!!!"

So, if the math is right, we're blowing 44-66 calls/nocalls every night! If we're wrong so often, maybe coaches should only be ejected on a third direct T since they are apparently correct when they take animated and profane note of our apparently non-stop mistakes.

On the bright side, there is apparently a lot of competition for "the worst reffed game ever," a stat on which I always thought I was the clubhouse leader.

Tryin' To Make A Livin' And Doin' The Best I Can ...
 

Rambling? You bet. I thought the same exact thing when I read the email. I can't write to save my life, but you can certainly bet that if I were to send out an email "blast" to thousands of IAABO members, I would have put a lot more time, and effort, into its editing. I've seen texting from teenagers that looks better than the email in question.

The email mentions that many of these "blown" calls were observed in Maine. Someone certainly must be doing a poor job of educating IAABO officials in The Pine Tree State. Wait? I'm being told ... Who? Coordinator of Interpreters? From which state? Never mind.

You'd think that IAABO would only let trained officials send out announcements to their members.

I'd like to give him(?) the benefit of the doubt and assume that the 66 missed calls are from all the games on a given night. Maybe that's a baker's dozen, so 5 or so per game.

I'm not sure I can do that, though.

This was the response I received.

As you, I and all know...one can not toss the ball from one hand to another. I can not recall the last time I have seen that occur. It would never an area of concern.

Even though I did re-read 3 times, I did not notice that i should have included the word "bounce": Additionally, it is not a traveling violation...it simply was placed below the Heading.

The area of concern is bouncing/dribbling the ball from one hand to another....the ball coming to rest and the dribble ending/palming each time. As in the description, it occurs very often...it is always illegal. It is NOT RULED ILLEGAL.

Maybe my writing MISTAKE will result in making the correct ruling, a violation, rather than officials simply watching the illegal action and ruling it Legal.

With proof and evidence his first paragraph still contradicts the current rules. I asked our local interpreter what the justification is when the casebook is very explicit that he is wrong, but I think this is a sticky situation for a local interpreter to comment on. Albeit the right response would be, "He's 100% wrong"

Quote, Unquote ...
 

Upon reading the description of the situation you probably realized.....I did not mean tossing the ball from one hand to the other hand. I can't recall the last time I have seen that occur. My writing mistake was in not using the word "bounce".to finish clarifying what the area needing attention is.The issue that was addressed is something that officials need to enforce and we simply watch this violation occur. Please make the clarification with your Board members if you share the memo with them. (Peter Webb, Coordinator of Interpreters, IAABO)

No, his mistake was in using the word "throws."