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Crab dribble with extra bull**** sauce

Brandon Goldner
The Commuter

Monday, January 12, 2009

LeBron chases an errant crab dribble. -Drew Hallowell/NBAE/Getty Images
Drew Hallowell/NBAE/Getty Images

The golden rule for breaking the law: Don’t try to get away with it twice.

LeBron James would be wise to keep that in mind.

While even a casual basketball fan can tell that the rules of carrying the ball aren’t consistent from college to the NBA, there’s only so much a referee can do when it’s thrown in their face. So when James broke the rule (which states one cannot take more than two steps after picking up the ball) not once but twice, referee Bill Spooner had no choice but to call it the second time, even if it meant the game-tying shot that James hit after the play was waived off.

Take a peek at this video and judge your yourself. The violations occur at 1:41 and 1:57, respectively. Not all browsers allow you to start and stop the video fast enough to catch it, but most of the ones that were tested did.

So when you’re caught breaking the rules, you can, a) admit your mistake and man up, b) deny that you did anything wrong, or c) make up a brand new rule to suit you. While the last may have worked well enough for Henry VIII to manipulate long-held beliefs in order to divorce his first wife, it doesn’t seem like it would work so well for James, whose brand-new basketball move, the “crab dribble,” is quickly finding it’s way into the litany of excuses deployed by frustrated 7th-grade players everywhere.

James first used the term during a post-game interview, when he said of the traveling violation, “It was a bad call. I took a crab dribble, which is a hesitation dribble, and then two steps.”

When asked by a reporter a few days later what exactly a “crab dribble” was, James said “..it’s something I work on in the summertime,” and rehashed his previous explanation. But when asked if it was only two steps after the move, he said something more insightful. “The two steps don’t count…until you pick the ball up. If the ball is still in the motion…[sic], you see guys bounce the ball, and still be able to bounce it again.”

OK, so what he’s saying is that maybe it was technically three steps, but the definition of the end of the dribble doesn’t come from when it last hits the floor, it starts when it hits your hand AFTER that dribble. He would have a point in this case, since in both clips his first step clearly occurs before the ball hits his hand after the last dribble.

So what do the rules say?

In section III it defines dribbling, but says nothing about what constitutes the end of the dribble. In section XVI, it defines traveling, and while it clearly defines the footwork involved with a travel, there is no definition of what constitutes the end of the dribble.

In theory, at least, LeBron James’ “crab dribble” is a semi-legitimate move, because the definition of when a dribble begins and ends is open to interpretation. Until someone can argue otherwise, James has invented a new move, a new interpretation of decades-old rules, and a snappy new name to top it off.

Who says you can’t changes the rules while playing the game?

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