Screening

[M&M Guy]

Originally Posted by SamIAm

I think the phrase Such a case is to be ruled incidental contact provided the opponent stops or attempts to stop on contact does exempt a player from being called for a foul.

I'm not sure if "exempt" is a good word to use in this case. I had 2 different screen plays last night in the same game that might illustrate the difference.

First one, post player sets a screen up high and waits as the ballhandler runs the defender right into it. Defender hits the screen, didn't try to stop, and crumples into a heap right at the feet of the post player. Post player was knocked back a step, and contact was pretty severe, perhaps even resulted in a slight injury, but definitely incidental - no foul.

Second play, defender sees the screen, slows down a little on contact, but then decides they're going to keep going to get to the ball handler behind the screener. Both players go down, and even though the contact was less than the first play, I called the foul on the defender for displacing the opponent. Yes, they initially slowed down before contact, but the contact caused the screener to go down and put them in a disadvantageous position. I'm not going to exempt the defender from a foul in this case just because they "attempted to stop" first before running over the screener.