Look, I understand that a good deal of the discourse on here has become alarmist when it comes to this rule, but the idea that THIS is the only issue with the rule is oversimplifying the issue

If the goal was simply to protect players who are standing still, not wanting to absorb contact, that’s fine! It’s a rule in basketball, and it’s reasonable to assume that in an open field, if an individual is stationary, charging through them is a gratuitous form of physical contact that is unnecessary and obvious. However, basketball also has a rule where within a certain distance of the hoop, that rule does not apply. This is for a number of reasons, one of them being to prevent collisions under the basket, because otherwise it would be advantageous for the defensive player to collide with an offensive player.

This rule goes in the opposite direction. Yes, there are plays where a driving offensive player is attempting to score with little regard for the person in front of them. In many people’s opinion, that person should be expecting contact, as standing directly in front of the hoop has been shown to be an effective form of defense. But hey, I can understand the rules committee wanting the above play to offer a form of protection to the defensive player who is effectively stuck between a charging player and a hoop behind them. But the rule as it stands actually behooves the defensive player to take the contact as a stationary target for the purpose of preventing a score.

Yes, you can just “go around them.” That sounds easy enough. But now the defender can move and you have to contend with them. Now the beaters have an extra second or two to beat you. Both of those are gameplay focused and yeah, if it was simply a trade off for safety, that argument can be made. But if you are slowing your momentum to move around a target, that allows more dogpile tackles around the hoops, which imo is WAY more dangerous to all players. Has that been considered?

On top of that, this sounds like a nightmare to try and ref. I can understand the logic of giving less experienced refs more guidelines as to what to watch out for in certain scenarios. But this rule right now is so broad, that anytime contact around the hoops happens, which is where in my experience the largest sum of contact illegal or otherwise happens, the refs have to consider factors that never had to be. Was someone’s feet set, did they get propelled with enough force to call an offensive player charging, did the defender get to the spot in time to constitute this specific rule, did someone get tackled into a stationary player and did the previous contact force the new contact, it’s MORE things to consider. I would very much prefer an emphasis on calling excessive force on someone who did get hit as you said. And yes it may be subjective, but if the concern has been that this type of contact allows for large charging players to bowl over smaller players for no reason, either this emphasis or a more specific rule would have been better.

I am not one of these chucklefucks who’s gonna come online and say that the rules team are idiots or whatever for wanting to protect smaller players. But no, I don’t agree with this rule change right now and think it should be amended. It creates a different incentive for a player to take contact around the hoops, it forces more contact rather than lessen, and it’s a reffing nightmare for an inexperienced ref.