Quote:
Originally posted by Hawks Coach
Think about the other side of the equation. Often, you can have a very hard foul at a time when everyone knows the defense has to foul, but you can't (or shouldn't) call intentional because they make a legit attempt at the ball.
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Coach, the intentional foul rule reads that even if a player is making an attempt at the ball, it is an intentional foul if the contact is excessive.
As I've stated before, when this language was added to the rule a few years ago, I thought it was because the NF was finally recognizing the need for some kind of call on hard fouls that fell short of being hard enough to deserve ejection, but needed a penalty beyond that of a common foul. The NBA has this in their "flagrant 1" and "flagrant 2" system, where one results in ejection and one doesn't. If used in this context, it's a really good tool and a really good rule.
However, I do agree with you that if we don't call the "soft" intentional quickly, the contact level will escalate. What I don't like is that the rule may be interpreted by some as a license to foul harder (get their money's worth, so to speak), since the penalty is the same (assuming the contact falls short of flagrant). I really don't have an answer on how to mitigate this situation.