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March 22

"Neutral zone marks" in basketball

The little 8" x 12" rectangles sticking out of the key on the low post are called "neutral zone marks." What exactly is the point of them? I know they serve to demarcate the front of the area where defenders can stand on free throw attempts, but why a rectangle and not a simple line like the other marks on the key? -- Mwalcoff (talk) 02:40, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Just added the above pics so people can know what you are talking about. I'm about to dig up the rule book to see why the closest hashmark is "fatter", as can clearly be seen in these pics. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 03:09, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Near as I can tell, it is related to how players must organize at a free-throw. According to the rulebooks I have looked at, the rule is that on a free-throw, the defending team (i.e. the team NOT shooting) MUST have two players on the basket-side of the fat marks, and the offense MAY not place players here. [1] has some stuff on it; search for the word "neutral" (its a LONG page). The other 4 "slots" around the key may be filled by offensive or defensive players. It is the ONLY coherant reference I can find to the use of those marks. The NBA rulebook, [2] mentions there existance, but does not give their purpose. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 03:25, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

After looking through a few more sites, several like this MS Word document: [3] indicate that it is fatter merely to increase the seperation of the players at that point. The only references I can find to it say something like that players may not cross the vertical plane of the outside edge of the hashmarks and neutral zone marks. Given that rule reference, the only compelling reason to make that one mark fatter seems to be to increase the seperation between players on opposite sides of that fat line compared to the other lines. Though, from a pratical purpose, I'm not sure the extra 10 inches makes that much of a difference. But there it is... --Jayron32.talk.contribs 03:32, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I think I found the answer. I just looked at a clip of an NCAA basketball game from 1965 on TV4U.com. Nowadays, in college ball, everyone stands behind the neutral zone marks. But in the old days, the closest defenders stood in front of the neutral zone marks. Apparently, they wanted the defenders and the offensive players to be at least a foot away from each other. My guess is when they moved everyone back a notch, they didn't change the floor markings. -- Mwalcoff (talk) 23:48, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Looking for a French music video

I'm looking for a French music video in which they use various vinyl album covers to play out various scenes in the video. For example, there are often album covers displaying a face, being held over the face of an actor in the video. I don't know the name of the song or the band, only that the song is entirely in French and that the band is composed of two men. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.25.108.130 (talk) 05:11, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Cheats for Black

can i get some cheats for black (video game) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 6zo6dy6 (talk • contribs) 12:48, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sure you can. Your best bet for that is to head over to GameFAQs' Black section for the PS2. If you have the Xbox version, you appear to be out of luck, since there are no cheats listed for that version. (Generally, if GameFAQs doesn't list it, it's a fairly safe bet that it doesn't exist, at least if the game is even remotely popular.)

For future reference, including a heading for your question (which I did for you) and specifying the platform you have the game for is going to increase your chances of getting a meaningful answer. -- Captain Disdain (talk) 13:05, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Singing Idol contest in Bangladesh

In Bangladesh, I know that CloseUp1 is a singing idol contest but it is the production of NTV Bangladesh. Is this true that there are more singing idol contests? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.64.52.14 (talk) 14:28, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

See Category:Singing competitions for more examples. --Jayron32.talk.contribs 02:50, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How do they calculate the rating for mountains in the Tour de France?

In the Tour, they divide clims into 4th, 3rd, 2nd, 1st category climbs and hors catégorie climbs. How do they combine the different elements (length, steepness, etc.) to give each climb its category? Thanks. Leptictidium (mt) 17:51, 22 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

This unofficial explanation seems to be your best bet. Clarityfiend (talk) 00:40, 23 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]