Casey Bass: Today on Club House Gas we’re lucky enough to be joined by a friend of the show, James Armstrong, a long time sports referee, and he’s going to take us some of the rules of the game, so stay tuned. It’s Club House Gas.
James Armstrong : This is James with the rules of the game of basketball. Some of the things that you may have wondered about and what everybody seems to know, except the official who is calling the ball game.
One of the first things that you confuse when you’re watching the NBA because there is never call, that’s the travelling call. There are strict guidelines as to what is a travel and if you watch NBA basketball , you’ll never guess it by the number of steps they take. You are legally allowed a step and a half which looks like two steps, but on the second step you have to release the ball on either pass or a shot attempt on the second step. So that means you get a step and a half, because if you take two steps and stop, that’s a travelling violation. You never see it in the NBA.
But you have to take into consideration that most of them finish off a slam dunk, the thrills, the crowd and you never worry about if they took four steps and a half, because everybody can’t slam it like that. But generally, you have to stay within those guidelines.
Another trick you want is the pivot foot and the place of that determines whether or no it’s a travelling. Once you establish a pivot foot, meaning the first foot to hit the court after you gain control of the ball becomes your pivot foot. Now you can pivot with the free foot all day unless you happen to be in the lane, and we’ll get to that in a minute, it will be a three second call. But you can pivot all the way around at 360 or backwards and forwards as long as the pivot foot stays anchored.
One instance which people know, you can raise that pivot foot on a pass or an attempt to shot without violating the travelling rule. You can raise up the pivot foot and everybody says if he moves his pivot foot, it’s a travel. But it’s not if he passes or he shifts, okay. That means, he could come to a stop and establish a pivot foot and then pivot around and then raised that pivot foot and shot attempt or a pass. That’s an little known rule and the general public is not expected to know that rule and they always react to it.
Now, the three second call that everybody wants to count for you and on a good day I have been known to tell them, sometimes I say when I yell that’s on a good day, I can count all the way to five. And I say that tongue and cheek and they usually accept it that way. But the rules of that three second is that you cannot beat in the offensive lane space for more than three seconds when your team has the ball in the front court. Emphasis on the front court, you cannot call a three second call violation if you camp out in the lane and the ball is in the mid court to the back line. If they are in the back court nothing counts as far as the three seconds call I made.
Also, each time a shot is attempted, the three second call recycles. Meaning, once the ball is in the shooters hand, the three second call is discontinued until that same team maintains control again, regains control of the ball and that’s a hard one for the fans because they see these people keep shooting the ball and somebody has camped out in the lane the whole time and they say, “Come on referee, are you blind? That’s going to be three seconds.” And the coaches get involved and they say, “Three, four, five,” and usually I warn them if they get to six, they got a technical foul because I want to remind them, my worst day in math, I can count up to three. And those are a couple rules of the game.
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