Inquiring Minds Want To Know ???

[Camron Rust]

Originally Posted by Lah Me

Complete, utter and unmitigated bull pucky.

Methinks you need to find someone somewhere to explain to you what the words "accidentally" and "incidental" mean.

"Accidentally" doesn't mean that ALL contact is "accidental". If that was true, you would NEVER have a foul.

And not ALL contact is incidental either.

Didn't bother to read rules 4-27-3& 5, did you?

There is nowayinhell you can calll any contact "accidental" or "incidental" when an opponent gains an unfair advantage through that contact. And knocking a ball OOB by hitting your opponent's hand is sureashell gaining an unfair advantage if some goober gives you a throw-in for doing so.

However, I sureashell aren't gonna change your mind....and I sureashell ain't gonna try to either. Call what you want to call. Hopefully everybody else will call it the way it's been called for the last 50 years.

You remind of someone else who use to hang around here who was usually pretty darn smart but sometimes was just as incapable of understanding the basic English in the rulebook.

It flat out says it is not a foul if you attempt to hit the ball and, in the process of trying to hit the ball, accidentally hit the other player's hand. It makes absolutely no qualification based on advantage/disadvantage...none. It simply says it is not a foul.

And yes, I read 4-27...all of it. And not one word of it is the least bit relevant. It is defining to be NOT a foul, through the absence of an advantage, forms of contact that, had their been an advantage, would be a foul. It is NOT defining fouls. It only turns fouls into non-fouls....not the other way around.

The point of "accidentally" is to establish that the defender can't just stand there and repeatedly and deliberately pound on their opponent's hand just because it is in contact with the ball.

There is NO unfair advantage gained that was not intended by the rules. Why not? Because the rules explicitly and plainly (although some appear to not be able to grasp it) grant that specific advantage...which makes it fair.

EDIT: And if such a ball happens to go OOB, then that is a separate and independent call...who caused it to go OOB....who was the player to last touch the ball. That player is probably going to be the defender almost all of the time.

EDIT2: spelling corrected