Bruce,

Excellent action shot in my opinion.  What amazed me was the depth of field at f/1.4.  I guess the M4/3 sensor size helps with that.  And very accurate focusing on your part.  There's a little noise, but it's not objectionable.  I'm curious - do you wait for the action and take one shot, or do you shoot continuous and choose the best one later? 

All I will suggest for 'improving' the photo is that you consider de-saturating the colours.  They look a bit too strong on this (calibrated) monitor.  Vivid colours can add excitement and drama, but can also be seen as an editing issue.  Anyway, just my opinion.  From a screen capture I clicked on Photoshop's 'Image>Auto-Color' button to make this sample. 

Thanks for sharing the photo with us here in Critique - and for the tip on taking a small camera to the game.  I guess that rule is to protect spectators from getting bumped with large, telephoto lenses? 

. . . . Steven, senior critic

Hello, Bruce

Welcome to the forum. I am also very attracted to the image. You caught a vivid moment with vivid colours. It feels as if I am in the pitch. The subjects are nicely placed in the frame. I would only have wished that the player's foot with the blue uniform were not at the edge of the image. The point my friend made about saturation is worth considering. I think your image might find its way to the published ones. Have good light. Çiçek Kıral SC...

Bruce,

Steven and Cicek gave already a great advice. I used both ideas and did only a few additions. I started with the advice of Steven, after this I did in Photoshop SELECTION>SELECT SUBJECT all players were selected. I gave turn selection and used COLORTONE/SATURATION  and reduced the red  for a fraction less red. I also darked two knees a fraction. Than I went to the suggestion of Cicek, I made a duplicate layer and pulled a fraction right above and made one layer again.  No problem because "ring"was already a little bit going down. I repaired the shoe by cloning and at last I changed the format a fraction to remove a part on the right for full attention of the players. Below my suggestion, with the help of Steven and Cicek. Theo-senior critic.

PS. Perhaps I had to darkend the yellow player a fraction.

Thanks Theo Luycx Cicek Kiral Steven T for helpful feedbacks!

And to Steven's question:

do you wait for the action and take one shot, or do you shoot continuous and choose the best one later? 

I use continous shooting.

I guess that rule is to protect spectators from getting bumped with large, telephoto lenses?  

There might be a couple of reasons: Safety, like you said, spectators might bump into those telephoto lenses and that they might require more scrutiny at security checkpoints, thus increasing opeartional cost. On the other hand, NBA might want to protect the business of partnered presses and photographers and make sure they get the exclusive shots. The camera restriction is different at each location -- for Chase center that I went to it is cameras with lenses less than 3 inches, while it's 4-inches at Toyota center, Houston.