What is travelling???

It’s a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma.

I was complaining about this a little diffrently…I see palming running rampant in the league and am shocked that stern would allow such a poor example of basic fundimentals of the game to the little kiddies of the world.

And yeah…I don’t understand how half of the league gets away with traveling meanwhile the rest of the league makes up for it by being called for it when they never really did it, just to keep the rule around….

RAT BALL….ball get’s touched by the bad guy…you get to dribble again or take another couple of steps ;)

when he finally did establish his pivot foot ( which I think was his left) he then took two more steps plain as day…oh wait we played in Denver, never mind – that was a good call.

But while also allowing for two steps it is stricter in many cases. So if Rudy was still mostly playing like he learned it under FIBA rules, he should get less travel calls when everything is observed. He e.g. should bounce the ball first after receiving it with his feet planted (either one can be the pivot foot) before taking a step, while an NBA player would often take one or two steps first before bouncing it when crossing over/driving to the rim. Also double dribbles (when a player stops dribbling, holds the ball and then starts dribbling again) are strictly called by FIBA refs.

Problem is as Bayless insinuated in his interview video with ESPN TrueHoop: What do the refs really call? College refs are often bad, many NBA refs have a bad reputation too. Probably there are refs in every league that players don’t want to have.

Solutions? Maybe it would help if the NBA just assigned their top ref teams to the important games (those are pretty well known) and especially the playoffs. And was more open about rule violations, like it seems they start to be (e.g. TrueHoop had a lot of access to the refs this season). Why not have a “refs corner” on NBA TV each week, where some refs supervisor with a lot of experience publicly explains if that was the right call, what the underlying rule is, etc. I think that would clear a lot of things up and take away some distrust.

 In Britain (and Europe) the calls are much, much stricter. You will not get away with any of it in the leagues here.

But what is a travel? When Rudy keeps his left foot planted, takes a jab step with his right and then starts his dribble (ball leaves his hand then he picks up the left foot) and takes off….where was the travel? Over. and over. and over.

 That is a pretty common travel that doesn’t seem to be picked up, I see a lot of travels where players move from stationary to their dribble and poor footwork leads to a travel. They are so eager to get good position on the drive that footwork goes out of the window. And as was stated in Truehoop the referees don’t notice because they are looking for fouls in the upper body or blocking calls to do with the defenders footwork.

Duckworth in the low post.

Aww, we miss ya big man!

How complicated is that? I just stated it in EIGHT WORDS. For the first several decades of the NBA, there was no mystery or controversy about this rule. Everyone—officials, players, media, and fans—agreed on what travelling was. (It was also referred to as the “1 1/2 step rule.”) Once you’d played & watched the game for awhile, travelling was easy to spot—even on fast-moving plays.

Then, for better or worse, Big Advertising entered the league, and suddenly the travelling violation wasn’t so simple. Fans like to see spectacular drives to the basket; why ruin the fun by calling “travelling” when guys take an extra step or two?

I first noticed the change at the end of Magic & Bird’s careers. Suddenly, these two aging stars were allowed to essentially tuck the ball under their arms like football or rugby players and run to the hoop with it. I called it, “the Bird/Magic Lifetime Achievement Award.” What was the harm? Those two guys had saved the league, right? Let them cash a few more paychecks before retirement.

But soon the cancer spread, and other stars—and eventually non-stars—were allowed to take extra steps on their way to the hoop. Significantly, the rule never changed for guys not headed to the basket. To this day, if you pick up your dribble beyond the 3-point line, you’re not allowed to replant your pivot foot without getting rid of the ball first. This fact shows the ridiculousness of claiming the travelling rule actually allows two steps or “beats”—regardless of what the rulebook currently states.

The travelling rule is the travelling rule, and it’s simply been relaxed in an attempt to make the game more fan-friendly. Big deal, right? But to long-time fans like myself, distorting how games are officiated—whether in order to encourage spectacular moves, to help home teams win more games, or to assure that star players don’t foul out—only makes the great NBA game start to resemble pro wrestling. At a certain point, a sport ceases to be athletic competition and simply becomes entertainment. Is this David Stern’s vision? It would certainly seem so.