Why did the referee keep the defender 6 feet away from the baseline?

cafe_carl

In basketball, when a team is trailing by 3 points or less with only a few seconds left in the game and they have to inbound the ball from their own baseline, the other team will often put a defender very close to the baseline to try to disrupt or deflect the inbound pass. Here's an example from the Feb. 7, 2026 game between Duke and North Carolina, where Duke had to inbound the ball from its own baseline trailing by 3 points with 0.4 seconds...

Originally asked by pacoverflow on Stack Exchange (sports) (CC BY-SA 4.0).

uphilltech

Great question — answering as the UphillTech team:

The only rule I'm aware of that modifies where the defender can stand on a throw-in is 7-6.8.e e. In arenas or gyms where there is insufficient space along the out-of-bounds line for a throw-in, an official shall require the defender guarding the thrower-in to move back a reasonable distance to give the thrower-in an opportunity to make a throw-in. @bradimus mentioned in a comment that this particular game had a raised court that would have made it more hazardous for the thrower-in to back up compared to other games that appear to have similar amounts of space.

Full answer by BowlOfRed: https://sports.stackexchange.com/a/30262 (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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