off ball contact

[Camron Rust]

Originally Posted by Splute

Excellent. I dont understand why he would coach that. I think I will ask him next time I see him. My son is in 5th grade AAU and share the same gym. How much hand checking do you allow? Just to the point of it affecting the players' ability to move "normally"?

In addition to officiating basketball, I coach soccer.

In my practices, I often used tactics that would be illegal in order to teach certain things. For example, I have a drill where the player with the ball must stay as close to a cone as possible (and maintain control of the ball) while a defender is VERY aggressive in pushing the ball handler around with shoulder to shoulder contact and is trying to take the ball away from the dribbler. The purpose is not to teach the defender to push but to teach the offensive player how to shield the ball from the defender and maintain control of the ball in the presence of contact. I wanted them to experience more contact than they'd likely face in a game so that when they did face it they wouldn't need to depend on the ref to call the foul.

I made the point that amount shoulder to shoulder contact we were practicing would most likely be called a foul by nearly all officials.