Hand is ball?
 

Play tonight... Player drives to basket, gathers, and while going up (with ball in two hands) gets hand slapped hard (audibly) by defender.
My question is, it seems this should be a no-call because of 10-6-2 ("contact to hand on ball is incidental to play on ball")... but I feel this is one everyone in the gym would have wanted if I hadn't called it. I guess that doesn't matter if the rule says that's not a foul.


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You know you can't worry about what people in gym want. Rule 4 does say it's not a foul if a player trying to play the ball "accidentally" hits hand while it in contact w ball. Rule 10 says legal to hit hand if "incidental"....

If a player winds up and pounds another player I'm likely to have a call just for game management purposes....but, if the player makes what I would call a regular play on the ball, makes contact with hand while it on ball, even loud, ..I just say hand is part of ball.

agreed, the gym wants everything if its for their team. Incidental contact, even audible, is not necessarily a foul.

It's damned hard to get the hand without getting the wrist. One's incidental contact by rule, one may be a foul.

I had a conversation with a fellow official about this last year (i think) - he was discussing an officiating instructional video that he had watched that had some statistics about the amount of times a defender contacts the hand and the contact with the wrist/arm, etc. Someone else might know more details.

I remember thinking that going back and through, analyzing these plays and coming up with a statistical chance of something happening can be really good or it can be really bad. Interesting nonetheless.

I do not call fouls based on what I "hear" I call fouls based on what happened. Hearing skin hit each other is not unusual and still might not change the result of the play. If you saw the hand hit and that is all, then that is not a foul if that hand is touching the ball. I do not care what people in the gym think. Learned long time ago to ignore them if you want to do your job.

Peace

But...if the defender wound up and pounded the BH/D or airborne shooter on the hand and the offensive player's hand was in contact with the ball by rule it shouldn't be a foul. Part of the definition of incidental contact - in NF and NCAA - includes that it may be severe.

I appreciate the feedback, all. I think I knew the answer (the rule is pretty clear), but just needed to hear some reinforcement of my conclusion.


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