The NBA is allowing hand checking

[leolozon]

Doncic always had to deal with some form of hand checking.

[OriAr]

Watch any game where Curry plays the Celts and you'll conclude handchecking is still around.

I remember a game in 2015 or 2016 where Avery Bradley probably fouled out about 3 times guarding Curry. I think he eventually did foul out, but here were like a bazillion things he did could've been called for fouls and weren't.

Absolutely. I watched Curry get played with just as hard 80s/90s defense as anyone wants to claim and in 2022 with almost no calls and he still dominated. And yet people would still claim "the NBA needs to bring back hand-checking to stop the 3P shot" -- just comedy. Some of these people I wonder if they even watch playoff games, or if they just post on RealGM while yelling at clouds. Regular season has been soft, prior to this season's post All-Star break. But we've been seeing physicality, including hand-checking, in the playoffs.

And I say this as someone who watches old games in the off-season all the time. I'm a big Jordan and Magic fan, people just forgot and don't go back and watch.

https://youtu.be/GivsQwwiDDs?si=ftnm9bu1Uv3oTtsD

What does Hubie Brown know about basketball, right? Dismissing handchecking as negligible is stubborn and ignorant. It’s not a coincidence that scoring leaders went from mostly bigs to mostly perimeter players as the rules were implemented.

And it’s not just handchecking. It’s the three second violation, and it’s basically accepted by now since so many international players including
Giannis Luka Jokic have said it’s easier to score in the NBA. They wanted to open the game for accessible scoring, and that’s exactly what they did. Saying anything else is just denying the obvious with bias. Otherwise, explain the purpose of those rules and how they wouldn’t impact scoring.

Defensive three seconds violation became a thing when the NBA when the NBA got rid of illegal defense back in 2001, before then there was simply no need to it because zone defenses were illegal so defensive players didn't really camp in the paint like they do in Europe. Illegal defense made it super easy for the offense to turn the game into Iso ball, which made it unbearable to watch, combine that with the average talent level in the league going down due expansion = scoring nosediving, forcing the NBA to go nuclear and get rid of illegal defense, later getting rid of handchecking in 2004. (Important to note that handchecking was heavily limited by previous rule changes in 1979 and especially 1994, being only allowed within 15 feet of the basket).
The 7SSOL Suns were the first team built to try taking advantage of the new rule changes, prioritizing shooting ability and speed over size in their roster construction, blitzing the league all the way to a 62-20 record, however they couldn't get over the hump for various reasons and that team eventually traded Shawn Marion for Shaq without much success in order to beef up for the playoffs.
A couple of years later, Stan Van Gundy followed the same principles in Orlando, playing Rashard Lewis at the PF position and surrounding Dwight Howard with 4 shooters to create spacing. That team managed to surprise everyone with a trip to the NBA Finals, beating the much favored Cleveland and Boston on the way before losing to LA in 5.
A couple of years later, after losing to the Mavs in the Finals, Erik Spolstra went and spent the summer with Chip Kelly in Oregon, coming up with the "Space and Pace" offense by moving Bosh to the center position, and LeBron to the 4, making opposing centers leave the paint to protect initially Bosh's mid range jumer, and eventually his 3 ball. That, combined with that Pat Riley surrounded the roster around the Heatles with great shooters, made LeBron's and Wade's life driving to the basket that much easier, leading the Heat to win 2 rings.
Meanwhile the talent level around the league has started to increase significantly thanks to the influx of international players and better skills training in the early ages, players got more comfortable shooting the ball, handling it and passing it as well. At the same time, Daryl Morey in Houston realized something very basic, it's better to shoot 3s rather than mid range jumpers, leading the league into today's shot pattern of mostly 3 pointers and shots in the paint rather than the mid range jumpers that were very popular until then.
Those two trends ended up in the Steve Kerr Warriors, led by the Splash Brothers who could drain 3s from practically everywhere, taking the genie out of the bottle fully and starting the 3 point revolution that we are very much feeling today.
Those are changes that mean that even letting players handcheck at pre 1979 levels wouldn't bring back. Sure, you could handcheck Curry, but he will create the space eventually with his handles and then launch the 3 with his limitless range and ultra quick release. You can try to handcheck Luka (And a lot of teams do!), but he is still gonna create the space and then either launch the 3 or pass it to the open man. You can try to handcheck Haliburton, but most likely he'll still drop a dime that will embarrass the defense.
The players today are simply too good to be so easily limited by handchecking, they WILL create the space they need.
At first glance, sure, it looks like scoring is down sharply in the playoffs, during which refs have really let them play, but that has a lot to do with pace being sharply down, as offensive rating is still 113.3 (Or higher than any year in NBA history except the last two). Slower pace could indeed be due the increased physicality, however it could also be a result of the blowouts fest that the playoffs have been so far, with 4th quarter possessions generally lasting longer during blowouts.
BTW, offensive rating is sharply up in Europe as well, it's pretty much at NBA levels there these days. The trends are strong there too.

[jkvonny]

They should have never disallowed hand checking to begin with TBH.

I remember around early to mid '00s is when they really enforced calling fouls on hand checking, right? That was weird. Kinda softened up the defense around the league.

It was banned after the 1978 season for whatever the history is worth...

1978?!

Wow... Really??

[AussieBuck]

Hand checking has never gone away, it's just degrees of how much **** you get away with. Hell, look at the Wolves/nuggets first two games against games three and four. Rules can stay the same but a few whistles to let you know how much you can take the piss makes all the difference

[Harry Garris]

They should have never disallowed hand checking to begin with TBH.

I remember around early to mid '00s is when they really enforced calling fouls on hand checking, right? That was weird. Kinda softened up the defense around the league.

Yup. Late 90's/early 2000's. And it radically changed the game. The 2000's still had grown up with it but by 2010 any influence was gone and so was hard nosed defense.

I've never understood the logic behind being able to push the guy you're defending around = hard nosed defense. To me that sounds like the exact opposite of hard nosed defense.

[TheGeneral99]

The refs always loosen the whistle in the playoffs...nothing new. There has always been some degree of hand checking as well.

[wadenation305]

The game is better to watch with some degree of hand checking allowed. Defenses were handicapped to ridiculous levels. The game was descending deeper and deeper into unwatchable territory. Now the game is much more entertaining to me. I hope the NBA permanently goes back to being a league where defense can win games.

I feel bad for all the players before them that really battled hard to gain their place in the history books, only to be knocked out by some Fortnite player that got handed to them the game on the easiest difficulty.

[Bergmaniac]

Handchecking has always been allowed in practice, especially in the playoffs. It's hilarious to me that there are hardcore NBA fans who think otherwise.

[cupcakesnake]

What is with this weird fan myth around hand checking?

Hand checking has never been allowed or disallowed. It's been a point of emphasis that has been called more or less at different times. It's never been legal or illegal.

Regardless, it's never had the impact that fans seem to think it does. NBA historians who have done the research have debunked this over and over again.

For those that don't know the history, hand checking is one of the most diabolical defensive tactics known to man.

I'm sorry Sealab, but this is silly. Completely incorrect and only something said by "those that don't know the history".

[ropjhk]

Hand checking has never gone away, it's just degrees of how much **** you get away with. Hell, look at the Wolves/nuggets first two games against games three and four. Rules can stay the same but a few whistles to let you know how much you can take the piss makes all the difference

This.

It's all dependent on how officials chose to call a game. Some games are called tightly and some games are officiated more loosely. It's always been that way and it does indeed impact scoring and can lean the game in favour of one team over the other. I'd say it's also true though that the amount of games where physical defense is allowed has generally declined over the years until very recently. Now it seems like the NBA is trending back the other direction and we are getting more games with more defense.

[Showtime 80]

What is with this weird fan myth around hand checking?

Hand checking has never been allowed or disallowed. It's been a point of emphasis that has been called more or less at different times. It's never been legal or illegal.

Regardless, it's never had the impact that fans seem to think it does. NBA historians who have done the research have debunked this over and over again.

For those that don't know the history, hand checking is one of the most diabolical defensive tactics known to man.

I'm sorry Sealab, but this is silly. Completely incorrect and only something said by "those that don't know the history".

Hand checking ALONE doesn’t alter things radically, but combine that with the other perks modern offenses have been getting since the mid 2000’s and it becomes event how cheapened offensive numbers have become:

Virtually eliminating hand checking
Allowing Illegal screens
Defensive 3 seconds
Strict flagrant foul rules
Freedom of movement
Flagrant laxity in dribbling rules

You combine all that and honestly it’s a disgrace teams aren’t averaging 140 ppg!

The league didn’t want the mid 2000’s Spurs, Pistons or Pacers blasting every offense or offensive superstar away with their physical defenses so they eliminated the incentive yo build teams like that so players like Nash and Curry could flourish without much resistance. Here’s Steve Kerr explaining how the NBA made it easier for offensive players:

Watch on YouTube

;pp=ygURU3RldmUga2VyciBncmFoYW0%3D

[AbeVigodaLive]

It's easy to track when the NBA's stance on hand-checking changed... see Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns in 2004-2005.

That coincided with the NBA prohibiting hand checking above the free throw line. It's fine if we want to put the genie back in the bottle... but these sorts of rules aren't always made in a vacuum. Consider what was happening at the time...

2004 ECF scores:

74 - 78
67 - 72
78 - 85
68 - 83
65 - 83
65 - 69

Do we really want to go back to anything remotely close to that? I don't know what the answer is... maybe there are other tweaks. I'm just pointing out that basketball fun was on a trajectory straight down... and I welcomed the SSOL Suns with open arms at the time.

[HotelVitale]

Watch any game where Curry plays the Celts and you'll conclude handchecking is still around.

I remember a game in 2015 or 2016 where Avery Bradley probably fouled out about 3 times guarding Curry. I think he eventually did foul out, but here were like a bazillion things he did could've been called for fouls and weren't.

Absolutely. I watched Curry get played with just as hard 80s/90s defense as anyone wants to claim and in 2022 with almost no calls and he still dominated. And yet people would still claim "the NBA needs to bring back hand-checking to stop the 3P shot" -- just comedy. Some of these people I wonder if they even watch playoff games, or if they just post on RealGM while yelling at clouds. Regular season has been soft, prior to this season's post All-Star break. But we've been seeing physicality, including hand-checking, in the playoffs.

And I say this as someone who watches old games in the off-season all the time. I'm a big Jordan and Magic fan, people just forgot and don't go back and watch.

https://youtu.be/GivsQwwiDDs?si=ftnm9bu1Uv3oTtsD

What does Hubie Brown know about basketball, right? Dismissing handchecking as negligible is stubborn and ignorant. It’s not a coincidence that scoring leaders went from mostly bigs to mostly perimeter players as the rules were implemented.

And it’s not just handchecking. It’s the three second violation, and it’s basically accepted by now since so many international players including Giannis Luka Jokic have said it’s easier to score in the NBA. They wanted to open the game for accessible scoring, and that’s exactly what they did. Saying anything else is just denying the obvious with bias. Otherwise, explain the purpose of those rules and how they wouldn’t impact scoring.

Not taking handhecking rules as a major driver of the modern NBA offense is neither stubborn nor ignorant, it's the majority view of people who have looked closely at the topic. And it's not hard to see why. Handchecking rules were intended to open up driving lanes but putting them in perspective they didn't magically lead to the NBA becoming a spacing/3pt shooting/pn'r based game that it is today.

Your post was short so not assumign anything about your general take on this topic, but it looks like you're bringing in 4-5 things that are true (3 seconds and restricted circle are relevant, scoring in NBA games (esp RS ones) is easier than in FIBA), but don't make sense outside of many many other factors and data points from the 2000s to now.

To answer your last question very simply: it's true that the NBA wanted to increase scoring when it had reached that early 2000s sloggy nadir, but that's a long way from meaning that one or two of the NBA's changes actually caused the increase in scoring. (Like the government of most US states has wanted to slow inflation since the pandemic and has done many small things to push things that direction, but what actually slowed inflation in a meaningful and tangible way is larger pieces of the economic system shifting in ways that the state government of like NJ or Indiana has virtually no real control over.) A few brief points about that: the modern offensive game is defined by a spaced-out court, by pn'r initiating, and by a general layups/3s philosophy, and none of those 3 things benefit too much or too directly from handchecking. Those bigger things are about the whole structure of offense--where people physically are on the court, where they're dangerous from, and how an offense is creating its scoring opporuntieis; but aggressive handchecking effects what happens within the flow of any structure, makes it a little harder to drive one-on-one all over the court. And one-on-one driving not involving picks really isn't a huge part of today's structure or what makes it consistently effective, certainly not compared to the offenses of the 80s-2000s. (But also aggressive handchecking didn't happen much in the NBA for years and was only a regular practice here and there; it's also kind of irrelevant in pn'r sets, which are by far the most dominant sets now and a gigantic change from ofensive initiation in the early 2000s; and it's also never disappeared as DC said and officiating tends to be inconsistent about it, like it was in the 80s-90s).

[HotelVitale]

It's easy to track when the NBA's stance on hand-checking changed... see Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns in 2004-2005.

That coincided with the NBA prohibiting hand checking above the free throw line. It's fine if we want to put the genie back in the bottle... but these sorts of rules aren't always made in a vacuum. Consider what was happening at the time...

2004 ECF scores:

74 - 78
67 - 72
78 - 85
68 - 83
65 - 83
65 - 69

Do we really want to go back to anything remotely close to that? I don't know what the answer is... maybe there are other tweaks. I'm just pointing out that basketball fun was on a trajectory straight down... and I welcomed the SSOL Suns with open arms at the time.

Only thing I'd add here is that handchecking was perfectly 'legal' before this brief period when scoring started really tumbling and you started getting these tiny EC scores. Scoring was much much higher in the 80s despite handchecking rules being more liberal, and the great slowdown of pace that happened in the early 2000s didn't last for that long and I think was much more about the league being briefly stuck between offensive strategies. The faster paced game of the 80s/early 90s was gone but the spacing strategy hadn't taken hold yet.

Also seems like we're already found the right balance? The 150-142 games we saw in the RS are long gone, and the PO totals have been in the higher 90s or low/mid-100s.

[MrGoat]

Derek Harper was probably the best at it, and was the poster child used when they banned it. Pippen singlehandedly ruined the Pacers offense in the playoffs one year when the strategy was to have him guard Mark Jackson, picking him up in the backcourt forcing Mark Jackson to turn his back while Pippen hand checked him in the backcourt. That slowed their offense to a crawl. Jackson struggled just to bring the ball up the floor.

All of those sub-par Ewing-era Knicks point guards like Doc Rivers, Chris Childs, Greg Anthony, Charlie Ward (and Harper was in there too) seemed like they were in the league simply because they were strong little dudes who were great at putting hands on you. They were notorious for it, and god knows they were terrible at everything else related to basketball

You think Harper was bad at basketball? Lol

Yeah, that's a wild take. Harper is one of the greatest players in NBA history who never got selected to an All Star team

[SelfishPlayer]

Hand checking was banned in 1997, so I sourced some hand checking professionals from before then. Gary Payton and Nate McMillan. It's not just the hand, it's also the forearm used to defend a driver.

Watch on YouTube

[dhsilv2]

They should have never disallowed hand checking to begin with TBH.

I remember around early to mid '00s is when they really enforced calling fouls on hand checking, right? That was weird. Kinda softened up the defense around the league.

It was banned after the 1978 season for whatever the history is worth...

1978?!

Wow... Really??

After the 78 season so it went into effect in the 79 season.

From 78 to 79 scoring went from 108.3 to 110.3 and field goal shooting 46.9 to 48.5

Here's an article from the era on it.
https://www.nytimes.com/1979/04/03/archives/issue-and-debate-as-nba-looks-to-increase-interest-should.html


Now before the 1995 season, the league would once again emphasis this. Enforcing the Hand-Checking Rules. My understanding however is this was a point of emphasis, not a rule change but someone can correct me if I"m wrong.

Finally in 2005 Hand checking was "strictly forbidden". But once again my understanding this was done more through a point of emphasis and it was done to reduce some of the drop in scoring that happened prior with allowing zone defense.

[JonFromVA]

Eric Snow took a hit, but some of you may recall there were more to the new defensive points of emphasis than that. For instance, defenders were expected to move their feet and a lot more blocking calls were made.

Most players quickly adapted and then once the league was happy, the refs stopped emphasizing their points of emphasis falling back on the good old incidental contact rule to ignore whatever they felt like ignoring.

[jkvonny]

It was banned after the 1978 season for whatever the history is worth...

1978?!

Wow... Really??

After the 78 season so it went into effect in the 79 season.

From 78 to 79 scoring went from 108.3 to 110.3 and field goal shooting 46.9 to 48.5

Here's an article from the era on it.
https://www.nytimes.com/1979/04/03/archives/issue-and-debate-as-nba-looks-to-increase-interest-should.html


Now before the 1995 season, the league would once again emphasis this. Enforcing the Hand-Checking Rules. My understanding however is this was a point of emphasis, not a rule change but someone can correct me if I"m wrong.

Finally in 2005 Hand checking was "strictly forbidden". But once again my understanding this was done more through a point of emphasis and it was done to reduce some of the drop in scoring that happened prior with allowing zone defense.

Ok. Interesting. Thanks.

[Praetor]

The NBA is best when the scores are between 95-109.

Not a fan of the mid-2000s when scores were in the 70s but also can't stand the early 2020s when scores were in the 120's and 30s.

Just make it 1st to 100 wins

Great on paper, but makes broadcasts really hard. 2004 Pacers vs. Pistons might have been longer than a baseball game, but the games in the first half of the season might have been shorter than a romantic comedy.