Camp Wisdom: "Be sure to call...."

[Hawks Coach]

I agree with the general gist of Richard's post, but I believe that the second half is a bad time to begin to focus on hand checks. If you are going to call them, call them early. If you are calling the hand checks in front of the defending coach, it pays also to be catching an occasional illegal screen, so that they will obviously see that you are "calling it both ways" as so many like to say.

I just think that if you are setting a standard for how the game will be played, the hand check should be set a standard early on. It becomes frustrating to defenders to adjust to what is and is not allowable contact during the course of the game just to have it change as the game comes down to the wire. Plus the hand check for a first foul is a lot less frustrating to all involved than if the hand check is for a third or fourth foul early in the second half when that type of defense was let go the entire first half.