Crushed By Questions Watching Olympic Handball

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Nothing but questions came pouring into my head watching Egypt scrap with Hungary in handball yesterday on Day 1 of the Paris Olympics.

You can tackle a guy, basically, if he tries to penetrate and take a shot. No pads, no kneepads, bare-boned flesh hits. But it’s not clear if that’s a foul, just part of the game, or what price you pay for the mugging.

There are no foul shots like in basketball when a guy gets fouled. The fouls are definitely intentional and constant; of this I am sure.

It seems to me if you can tackle a guy while shooting why not do that every time if it doesn’t cost you anything? But think of the chaos. Would we be watching a different kind of handball?

This sport could lower itself to becoming rugby wrestling with a round rubber ball instead of the impregnated oblong rugby balloon.

The dribbling in handball is also perplexing. Sometimes guys dribble, sometimes they don’t. And they’re not especially good at it. Dribbling doesn’t seem to be an obligation, just dribble if you feel like it, to look cool and strut your stuff. Or don’t.

The jumping is a big thing. You can’t think about becoming a handball player if you don’t rock a 49-inch vertical. These guys could be more than adequate replacements in Michal Jordan fly in the clouds Nike Airness commercials.

Every one of them has better hang time than a Ray Guy punt or a Reggie Roby punt or a Sportface blog. It’s not just the time they fly through the air. It’s the twisting and contorting and gyrating they do while in flight to trick the goalie into thinking they’re gonna whip a high bullet then go low at his sneakers on the bounce after faking one at his man region.

The other thing is they kind of stand around a lot on offense. No moving without the ball – a central tenet of basketball. A toss here, a couple random dribbles, a lob to another guy, here you take it, dribble or whatever. The defense stands around too.

Then all of the sudden a human airplane takes flight, a couple guys tackle him and ring his neck all while he’s trying to play mind games with the unpadded goalie who looks pretty certain he can’t prevent a goal.

And none of it seems to matter too much kind of like in the movie “Dodgeball” when Vince Vaughn and Ben Stiller acted like crazed creeps in a dodgeball game that can only be described as something akin to the Paris Olympics Opening Ceremonies: inexplicable.

Catch handball action today on Peacock. Poland against Norway or whatever.

Doesn’t really matter.

You won’t understand what’s going on.