340 Pound Hand-Checks in Basketball

Our local sports radio station had brief but interesting debate about stricter rule enforcement enacted this year with regards to defensive hand-checking in NCAA basketball play. It seems there’s quite a push (no pun intended) to tighten up defenses with regards to applying contact to your opponent during play.

I have mixed feelings about it at the NCAA level. I understand why we don’t see a ton of hand-checking or interference at the NBA level. Fans want to see a lot of shooting and quick cutting penetration to the basket. Allowing too much contact, hampers the speed of play and dampens scoring opportunities. On top of that, the skill levels are much more equalized among players such that expending that kind of energy on defense isn’t typically worth it over the course of a game. “They’re going to get theirs” is the mindset, so saving energy for faster transitions and offense only makes sense so that “we can get ours.”

I have to confess a pretty unpopular opinion though at high school, and most definitely at middle school levels of play. Size differences being what they are, hand-checks matter.

As the parent of a very tiny middle school basketball player, I feel pretty confident in saying at a 70-pound hand-check from a girl who hasn’t hit maturity going up against a 140-pound girl who matured very early, won’t be that disruptive to their dribbling, shooting, or just motion in general.

But when you turn the tables and have that same 140-pound girl hand-checking a 70-pound dribbler, you better believe it hinders motion. By comparison, I am a grown man weighing a meager 165 pounds. I can hardly imagine having to endure dozens and dozens of hand-checks and defensive obstructions from a 340 pound man over the course of a game.

I suspect that if I had to play basketball the way my daughter has to play the game now, I would come home at night with a smattering of purple and black across my entire body – as she often does now.

I will forgo making any “size matters” jokes and stick to the facts—size does matter in basketball. It matters less at higher levels because there is sort of a “break-even” point where too much size hinders player speed. But at the early stages, it is very common to see young players who have fully matured to adult sizes bring double the body mass of their opponents every week on the court.

No one likes seeing their bigs hampered by whistle happy refs. Taking size out of the game due to officiating seems downright criminal. But so does watching 150 pounds swat mercilessly at an 80 pound point guard.

Personally, I’d like to see post play stay as physical as possible while getting tighter calls made up top in middle and high school ball. Here are my top three reasons:

#1   Safety of the athletes.  The human body isn’t built to withstand too many collisions with objects that double its size. So Steph Curry weighs 185 pounds and Lebron tops out at 250 pounds… imagine giving Lebron an extra 50% in body weight and taking him to a solid 375. Now imagine that he was given mostly free license to reach, swat, and otherwise body up on Steph….

Steph is going to get around him, no doubt. He’s Steph freaking Curry! But I would bet that over time, Steph’s body isn’t going to keep up. That much of a size differential hammering on his hands, arms, and shoulders is going to greatly increase the risk of injury, as well as rapidly accelerate the general wear and tear to Curry’s smaller frame.

Given that 11-12 year-old girls haven’t developed safe-falling techniques, it’s going to be worse at lower levels and injuries will be more frequent. To back that statement up consider this quick fact --

According to a 2008 National Sport’s Medicine review of basketball, teenage GIRLS ages 12-15 comprised 50% of all post-game concussions.

Think about that… half of all sports concussions in basketball weren’t just girls, but middle school girls.

That’s 100% due to size differentials between pre / post maturity players.

#2   Most late bloomers don’t get to develop at the same pace in the sport. Because they are slower to mature, it is impossible to know for sure whether or not you’re dealing with a perpetual five-footer; or if you have a potential six-footer on your hands. Either way, nine times out of ten, the small kid will be on the bench, or worse – won’t bother trying out.

My sixth grade year, I was the smallest kid in the school. My nickname was even “Little Allred.” By mid-way through my 8^th grade year, I was the 3^rd tallest kid in my school. It happened that fast. I didn’t even try to play basketball until the 8^th grade because I believed I would never have a chance to play or contribute.

Calling a tighter game gives smaller players an opportunity to hone their dribbling and shooting skills on the off chance they do grow into a larger player. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve passed a big high school kid and asked, “Do you play basketball?” only to have them respond, “I would have but I didn’t know I was going to be this tall. I can’t even dribble because I never thought I would be big.”

Size matters… but maybe it shouldn’t matter as much as we allow it to matter when kids are young and still growing.

#3   Calling a loose game helps the bigs reach amazing success – but only in the short term. The older the opposition gets, the more the growth charts start to level out. By the 10^th grade, that 110-pound post player they pushed around in the 8^th grade weighs almost as much as they do… unless they learned to play correctly and learned to find success by doing things in good form, the bigs at lower levels find themselves hurting in big ways as the opposition catches up to them in weight.

Many of players of decent size find they have to actually JUMP for the first time in their basketball careers. They realize the fundamentals of boxing out weren’t just wasted ideas that their coach was always on about. As the rest of the players on the court grow and size gets closer to balanced, fundamentals matter more and more.

So many kids that found great success at earlier stages become team liabilities when size gaps begin to close. Teaching them fundamentals and calling tighter games better prepares them for what they will face at the next level.

So that’s my position on it… I say tighten the games up a lot at the secondary level. Let kids learn the sport, develop sound shooting, and quick, unobstructed transition play. It will reduce injuries, give smaller players a little more incentive to try out for the team while they grow, and it will ultimately make our team’s bigs that much better at what they are there to accomplish.