I don't know why, but high school officials have stopped calling this, maybe once or twice a season it will be called, but it happens 2-5 times a game. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but it is frustrating. 1. Because it is a rule that is not being enforced. 2. It is really hard to guard a guy who can spin and cover 5-10 feet gaining an advantage on the defense.
1. It's a rule: If you watch a tape from the 1970's you will be amazed at how fundamental teams are, they never walk and they rarely foul. Why is that? The game has degraded, in my opinion, because the way the game is called has degraded. There is no way that Milan or Loogootee's teams from the past who had success could play delay against bigger, stronger, faster teams. Officials will just now allow it to happen. Not because they have some vendetta against teams like those, but because of the way the game is called.
Those faster, stronger, bigger teams can push, shove, hold, walk in today's game and a smaller, slower, more patient team has very little shot of winning.
2. You gain an unfair advantage: If you are allowed to gain an advantage by picking the ball up and moving side to side, it is hard to guard. If you tell high school kids to shuffle their feet on defense when a player makes the spin move, few people can shuffle to the side to keep up with that. So what happens? It's 2 points or the defense is able to be out of position and block the shot. However, to be able to block this shot, you must be as athletic or more than the person making the move. At our level, kids can't shuffle correctly (unfair because offense is running) and rarely athletic enough to recover, so when they attempt a block they get called for a foul.
Don't even get me started on what a foul is today. Every year we get "points of emphasis" to clean the game up. Sometimes they call those points for a few games and more often than not they don't get called. Teams are allowed to put forearms in sides of ball handlers pushing them off line (displacement), but my biggest complaint is in rebounding. Teams are allowed to nudge from behind causing displacement, then when the defensive rebounder turns to wall up, a foul is called on the defense who was nudged (that's code for shoved/pushed) out of position in the first place.
Also, more and more teams drive the ball to the lane, really hard. We teach our teams to take charges and to "wall up" when they come at them. Walling up is holding your ground with your arms straight up making it hard for the offense to shoot over you. We invariably get penalized for this once every two games. Our defensive player will be where they need to be and the offense will run into them and jump up and it is called a foul on the defense yet the offense is the one who initiates all of the contact.
I will close with this; I haven't run into any really bad officials, well maybe a couple, but I really believe they love the game and work hard to try and do a good job. I often wonder if it is the officials fault that this stuff goes on especially the spin move. Is it cultural? This is something that has started in the NBA and has filtered down to the high school level. I have had officials tell me they won't call it because if they do they will be the only one who does (no, really, that's been said by a couple different referees), and I have been told that calling all those fouls hurts the flow of the game (well, letting one team molest another or each other hurts the integrity of the game). So is it cultural, has what the fans want changed the game? Or should the rule book be enforced with fewer individual interpretations.
I guess I shall see how many officials read this blog, but as I said most, if not all are working hard trying to do a good job within the confines of what is expected. So if I see you out there in the next few games, know that I truly appreciate what you do (I refereed elementary games before, it's hard) and the time that you put in. Just do me a favor....keep an eye on the feet of the player with the ball and realize that almost all spin moves are travels. (I can see it now, we have a game in the next month and my kid makes a spin move and a travel is called and the official will say "read your blog, like that call?"....I know it's coming.)
