Legal and Illegal use of elbows

[Adam]

Originally posted by Eric Huechteman
Also, Rule 4-27-3: "Similarly, contact which does not hinder the opponent from participating in normal defensive or offensive movements should be considered incidental."

Compare that with: "If the defender is crowding the player with the ball, making it hard to move, that's what I call good defense."

Pivoting is a normal offensive movement, and "crowding the player with the ball" hinders that movement.

[Edited by Eric Huechteman on Apr 20th, 2004 at 01:57 AM]

Eric, you can't back into defining a foul this way. You're right, pivoting is normal offensive movement, but so is driving to the hoop, shooting, etc. A defensive player's job is to hinder that movement, as long as it's done legally. If the defense is stationary, verticle, and in LGP, I don't see how you could possibly not call a pc foul when the offense uses his elbow to "clear out" space.