The joys of my evening

[walter]

Originally Posted by Eastshire

Sure, but the question is did the contact put you there or did you decide to fall down.

The question each ref has to ask is did the contact take the player to the ground or did the player dive? If the contact took the player to the ground, it shouldn't matter how nice the block was up top, the lower body contact allowed the block to happen (otherwise the defender wouldn't be close enough to make the block).

On the other hand, if the contact shouldn't have been enough to knock down the shooter, it's incidental contact even if the shooter chooses to fall down anyways.

Our standard cannot be did the shooter fall down. It must be was he knocked down.

This is the line (between what contact should unbalance a shooter and should not unbalance a shooter) that is changing with the skill level.

+1 Every play needs to be looked separately from start, develop, finish and then decide. The play as a whole is what makes a foul call warranted or not. I don't think anyone is arguing that there are clean block situations that can be fouls (using off hand to climb for the block, low body contact, etc). We are saying you have to see and judge the whole play.