Incidental Contact rule
 

What does this mean?

Rule 4, Section 27, Art. 4

...In cases of screens outside the visual field, the opponent may make inadvertent contact with the screener, and such contact is to be ruled incidental contact, provided the screener is not displaced if he/she has the ball.

What am I missing?

Dan

Ever seen a play where the post player sets up at the free throw line, the guard passes the ball to the post player and then cuts past the post player - using the post player, who now has the ball, as a screen? That's the kind of thing it's talking about...

A player with the ball may set a screen just as a player without the ball may set one. It doesn't happen often, but there is no rule against it.

What the rule is telling you is that if the screener does not have the ball the he/she may be displaced and it is still incidental contact. However, if the screener does have the ball, and he/she is displaced by the contact, then it is a foul on player who displaced him/her.

Right -- otherwise it would be a travel on the player with the ball and that wouldn't be right -- so a foul must be called.

Remember, the purpose of a screen is to get contact with the person you are screening. The best screens are those in which the defensive player doesn't see it until the very last moment or in some cases not at all. The contact in the latter case sometimes can look very violent yet by the rule stated the screen was legal and any contact no matter how severe is considered incidental.

This does not mean that after the initial contact we should ignore a push by the defensive person to go through the screener rather than around the screener to get to the ball or reestablish a guarding position.

From my experience, a lot of lower level coaches will lobby for a call when the screener goes down as a result of a blind screen. If you explain to them that the screen served its purpose and if you were to call it, it would take away there advantage and instead of the layup, they'd have the ball OOB for a throw-in, they usually get it.

Mregor