reffing illegal use hands vs a legal steal

[Adam]

Originally Posted by Pantherdreams

So lets be clear:

Reaching in/poking is not a foul. Contact the impedes the opponent or causes clear and immediate advantage/disadvantage is.

I work with a lot of guys who call the reaching and any contact at all who when we discuss it talk about game management, "trying to clean it up early", not wanting behaviour to escalate.

All that seems to get is a game with more fouls or less defense.

My preference is to let it go until I can see that the hands in or on and stopping the ball handler from moving freely or the ball comes loose as a result of the contact.

The one I struggle with is weak ballhandlers under physical pressure, where I feel like I'm bailing out the offense if I call contact when they were loosing the ball anyway. On the other hand if I let it go the defense just gets increasiningly aggressive smelling blood in the water.

The thing with this is, weaker ball handlers can handle less contact that might be incidental with stronger players.