Ball-handlers / Freedom of Movement

[JRutledge]

Originally Posted by BigCat

The rule which says an opponent SHALL not contact an opponent with his/her hand unless such contact is with opponents hand while it on ball etc…has been in the books forever. That covers hand checking very clearly.

I did not say there was not a rule for hand-checking previously to the addition of Article 12.

But two hands on the ball handler was never clearly spelled out in the rules until they added Article. Those all were added how we call the game or got rid of the wiggle room of interpretation. Interpretations are different than hard-fast rules.

Originally Posted by BigCat

In the 60s, 70s and early 80s the game was played without hands and it was called if one or both were used. Late eighties and nineties hands being used more and more. Somebody decided to start applying advantage/disadvantage to it. Wrongly imo. We had individual referees trying to determine what was an advantage and what wasn't. Not good. They tried using POEs to stop hand checking but people still weren't calling it because they were thinking advantage/rsbq….Finally, it was realized that they needed to spell it out very, very, very clearly. We have the automatics. They are saying, don't think, just call it. The rule has always been there to cover hand checking.

POEs are the worst ways to get an interpretation applied when it already does not support a rule.

Originally Posted by BigCat

I know what you are saying. In the early 90s the college camp clinicians were saying don't call it if player going east and west…only north or south. I didn't like it then or at any time. Offenses run east west…Anyway, the game is finally coming back around to what it was. IMO it is much better this way.

This was more than what a clinician told you, there was not a specific rule to tell us what should be called. I had called hand-checking or arm bars in the game in the 90s and only was told how that was not a foul. Now when I call those specific fouls and do not have to consider RSBQ, I have a rule that I can clearly reference.

It was more than what a clinician told us to do at a camp, it was hard call something that did not have a clear rule.

Supervisors say all the time and have been saying for a very long time, "I can defend a judgment, I cannot defend not knowing the rules." Well we have rules that stops a lot of that activity and we have support to call it that way. Again, never did I ever call "two hands" on a dribbler a foul automatically like I do now. The rule makes that very clear what to do just like I have rules on verticality when a coach asks for a foul (like he did last night) and why I called a PC foul when a player had LGP. No interpretation, a rule.

Peace