bad news about injured player

[jdw3018]

While I agree with everyone that in general calls (or no-calls) don't cause injuries, there are a few things we CAN do to potentially help prevent them. They are all non-basketball type plays. We can call a violation for swinging elbows the first time it happens and not wait for blood and teeth to attempt to stop the action. We can penalize unsporting conduct when it happens, which may prevent it from escalating into physical conduct. We can penalize intentional fouls when they are committed in late-game fouling and not allow the conduct to escalate.

Again, never are officials to blame for injuries. However, we can penalize conduct to reduce the chances of non-basketball plays escalating into actions that cause injuries.