Originally Posted by
Jderf
Right. I totally agree, actually. If the defender rotates into position at the start of (or during) the drive, he has the right to hold his ground and should do so. When this is done fluidly and consistently through effective rotations, I think it is what many on this board would call "beautiful defense." That is the way it should be played.
However, what people here are reacting against is a superficially similar play, but one which is less aligned with basketball fundamentals, and also which is much more dangerous. That play is when the perimeter guard beats his defender and makes a move towards the open basket and the defender does not rotate over in time. Instead, the defender makes a late move to slide into the path of the basket, after the driver has already committed to a scoring move. When the defender does this, it is often with their hands by their sides or locked in front of them, not trying to make a play on the ball, but rather trying to draw a charge call by making the play look similar to the legitimate play in the paragraph above. This play, as I said, is much more dangerous to the players, and it arises not from trying to play good defense, but instead from trying to take advantage of ambiguous rules. In that kind of situation, it is the rules that are the cause of the problem.
Now, I'm not sure what rule changes could be made to differentiate better between those two similar, yet fundamentally different plays -- but I definitely agree with others here that such rule changes should be proposed, discussed, and eventually implemented. Part of the problem, in my opinion, is that the two plays are just so hard to tell apart without a heavy dose of replay watching, so I think any rule changes should target that central issue. How to do that? That's the question.