ClutchCity.net Game Thread: Clippers @ Rockets 3/12/2003

pretty well spoken individuals...... may have been spending time at Ya0mingmania dot com to share and care (or troll and blow)...

 

ARMS AND HANDS DON'T MATTER! Did you see Miller's FT? His entire body was over the charity stripe. Plus, his left foot was hovering over the ground a foot over the line. You plain and simply CAN'T tell me that Andre shoots in the same form as those pics. That's asinine. Watch Stevie shoot a FT, watch Andre shoot a FT. It's like black and white. You're blind if you don't see it.

Yeah...that would have been a smart retort if it actually made sense with what you just said.

A terrible call...considering when they called it. Usually there's some kind of unspoken rule among refs to choke on their whistles when it's under a minute. This time they called something.

Damn lucky crap. I want to see my team in the playoffs. I don't care about the Clippers, don't care about the refs....what matters to me is we won.

 

The rule, nor its current interpretation, doesn't define what parts of your body can cross the plane and which parts cannot cross the plane, does it?

The rule simply says "the free throw shooter may not cross..." If the refs want to go by the rules, then arms and hands do count. They are part of "the free throw shooter" (last time I checked). Are they not?

This "cannot cross the plane" interpretation of the rule makes no sense, because technically everyone violates it. It's too subjective judging how much a player can lean, and how much they can't. Where is the line between too much lean, and acceptable lean? It doesn't have to be this subjective:

Why not interpret the rule as meaning "the player cannot step into the lane before the ball reaches the rim"? This is the way that I've always thought the rule was interpreted (apparently I was wrong) since Shaq would often step into the lane before the ball reached rim, definitely a no-no. If this interpretation is followed, there is little advantage gained in leaning into the lane, since you can't step into the lane until after the other players have already entered the lane (on the release of the FT shot) and established their positions.