Weekly Word: Foul Play
We’ve all gone to see our favorite professional, college, or high school team play, only to be disappointed by the best player or several players only participating for a handful of minutes due to foul trouble. We blame the officials…
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Continue ReadingWe’ve all gone to see our favorite professional, college, or high school team play, only to be disappointed by the best player or several players only participating for a handful of minutes due to foul trouble. We blame the officials for bad calls, we blame the coaches for keeping them in the game, jeopardizing them picking up that next foul, and we blame the players for being undisciplined. But, in the end, while you can place blame on an individual all you want, I think there is a rule that needs to be updated for today’s modern game.
Basketball is considered to be a contact sport, but considering the manner in which hand-checking and limited-contact post play is being called today, we either need to allow the game to be more physical once again, or we need to change the foul rule. I hear a lot of people clamor for a sixth foul in high school and college, and yes, that would alleviate a little bit of the problem, but I have another way to look at common fouls in basketball. I realize once some of the basketball “purists” read this article, there’s a good chance they won’t agree, but before passing judgement, please read the entirety of the article and consider all of the reasons.
Of all the major team sports, basketball is the only one where common fouls can disqualify you from the contest and really affect a team’s chances by taking it’s key player(s) off the playing surface completely. Consider this, in football you have penalty flags for holding, offsides, etc. In Soccer, you have direct and indirect free kicks. In hockey you have faceoffs. And in baseball/softball, you have balks, runner interference, catcher interference, etc. Now, I’m not talking at all about unsportsmanlike penalties, and those should still be officiated the same way; I’m simply talking about common personal fouls in basketball. Why not add a sixth foul?
I’ve coached for 23 years now, and I know that if I had a sixth foul for my players, they would play longer with two, three, or four fouls, adding more of a chance to pick up that next one. I’ve discussed this potential rule change with a few other coaches, and they think similarly. Sure, in some cases that one additional foul would allow a player to play a few more minutes, and it would limit the potential for a player to foul out, but the potential of fouling out still exists. Players would still sit when they’re in foul trouble, affecting their team’s performance. Players on the floor in foul trouble would still play tentatively, affecting their typical style of play. If not a sixth foul, then where do we go from here?
My proposal is to keep the five foul rule intact, but once a player picks up their fifth foul, they are not disqualified. Instead, for their sixth foul and every additional foul, the opposing team is awarded two free throws, plus they retain the ball out of bounds. Consider it like a delay of game penalty, but maybe call it something different (I honestly haven’t put a lot of thought into what to name it at this point). It would not go down as a technical foul or unsportsmanlike foul, but the opposing team would get free throws and keep the ball. Why does this idea sound appealing to me? Consider this…if you’re a football coach, and your Right Tackle has five holding penalties in a game, isn’t it up to that coach to determine how valuable that player is to the team, and whether or not to keep that player in the game, risking another penalty, or put in another player who might not get penalized, but who also might not be as talented or skilled? Similar examples can be made in the other sports.
All I’m saying is, instead of penalizing a basketball team or a player by them getting into foul trouble and having to take them completely off the floor, let’s adjust an antiquated rule and give the coach the opportunity to determine how valuable that player is to the team. If the coach is willing to sacrifice two free throw attempts to the opposing team each time a player commits their sixth foul (or more) because that player is of major value to their team, then allow that coach and that team to make the call, and don’t let the number of fouls on that player help dictate the outcome of the game.
You can also, look at it this way…if you are a small school, let’s say 1A or 2A, and you are really good because you have a great player who is talented and possibly a Division-I caliber recruit averaging 25 points per game of your team’s 63 points per game, then how do you think your chances would be against the #1 team in Class 2A or even against a good 3A or 4A team, if your best player only played seven minutes and fouled out with four points? It definitely makes it tough. Or, what if you have a solid “team” with no real stars, but four of your starters have two or three fouls each early in the second quarter?
Once again, I realize this is ludicrous and will never change, but I wanted to offer a different perspective to a rule that I think should be adapted, because today’s game is played differently than it was 20-30 years ago due to contact rules in place. I think a rule change of this nature would alleviate some of the issues with fans versus officials, and it would give teams a fairer shot at playing the way they truly want to play for the duration of a game, instead of protecting players in foul trouble and sacrificing the quality of their performance. Like I said, it was just a thought, and it would be interesting to experiment with at some level to see how it could work.
Header photo of Malik Stanley of Warren Central High School being fouled by a Pike High School player; photo courtesy of Robert Scheer of the Indianapolis Star at indystar.com.