Offense/Defense?

One of the biggest difficulties in refereeing basketball is contacts evaluation among players in movement. A decision taken only on the final moment – impact – often is not enough to “guess” the responsible and “strike” the call. Refereeing is not a bet : knowledge of the play and of the rules must be conjugated with a punctual reading of the play, mostly when the players collide coming from different directions and often floating in the air.

What happened: 3blue receive in the 3pts area, start in cross to ovrtake his opponent, two dribbles end jump for a shoot in the paint, 9 and 21yellow close the space infront the semicircle. 3blue and 9yellow fall on the floor. Centre and trail ref call a foul, their body language is eloquent: they exactly call one the opposite of the other! While the ball lies in the net for blue overtake, the trail ref makes “a step back” and let the scene to his mate: defensive foul, 3blue basket&1 which leads blue tem to 100pts and final victory.

On the rule book the criteria is extremely clear: after establishing a defensive legal guard position, the defensive player may move to guard is opponent, and move laterally or backwards in order to maintain the initial legal guarding position, and if the contact is on the torso of the defending player he’s responsible of the contact and an offensive foul must be called if the defensive player receive a damage or a disadvantage physical/technical.

9yellow executes perfectly his defensive movement, stopping outside the no-charge semicircle before 3blue lift from the floor;

9yellow steps backwards his right foot leaving space for the offensive player which causes the contact before releasing the shoot; charging foul!

The basket have to be cancelled and the game resumed with a throw-in yellow on the side line at free throw line extended.

After the release (you find the link under) Euroleague decides to stops the referees of the games, revoking nominations just sended. The referees have “jumped” the following four days of the tournament.

For further informations you may click on this links:

Where with Tommaso Tani we make a detailed analysis of the play in the podcast 3PO (only Italian version available)

Euroleague press release: https://www.euroleague.net/news/i/aaaw3k4ot9ucr8p8/euroleague-basketball-report-on-fenerbahce-beko-istanbul-valencia-basket-defensive-foul-call