I don't need to give you anything to prove my point because it's obvious. You want lower body strength and overall mass to outpower your opponents. Getting stronger to dribble faster? Really? You can dribble really fast through pracitce. Look at the and1 players. They are skinny and weak as shit. Passing? Look at steve nash. Practice. Swatting at the ball? Neither. Boxing out and backing down? lower body strength and overall mass. It's physics. Fighting through picks? Mass and speed. You can't push the guy out of the way with your hands. That's a foul.
I can go on and on, but it's retarded to do so. The ball is so light you don't need to be strong to play basketball. If being strong was so useful joey graham wouldn't be useless.
I never said you had to be strong to play basketball. And being strong doesn't equate to having basketball skill. I never said that.
My -whole point- is that being stronger than you currently are DOES NOT HURT you in any way. It can ONLY make you better. As long as your skill level doesn't go down (aka you keep practicing to get better) and don't just stop playing to work out, then getting stronger can only enhance your game. So your Joey Graham comment is as useless as Joey Graham himself is.
And you're right about using your hands being a foul...if it was called. Did you play competitively after middle school? I honestly am just curious. Because just about every league I played in after that age group was extremely physical. The more competitive, the more physical. Watch a top HS game, a college game, an NBA game. They are very physical, and they use their upper bodies to gain advantages. In their basic meanings, yes, you should only use your legs to box out, in an actual game that you're competing against top-flight competition, you use your whole body. I'm not saying you should teach kids to use their arms, but the fact of the matter is that in the top-levels of the game it is a requirement.
So here's what I'm saying. I will agree with you that in general principal when teaching a kid, you should not use your upper body in most of those things (except passing, dribbling, etc when you have the ball), but as far as boxing out, rebounding, blocking shots, etc it is a requirement at the higher levels. You must play physically with your whole body or just get manhandled at the higher levels.
And your AND1 comment about dribblers being skinny, I guarantee you that they are stronger than the first time they touched the ball. Through repetition, through constant dribbling, etc their strength grew. Sure they didn't gain mass, but they got stronger with the ball. So my point is still valid, they got stronger over time through repetition (not weightlifting necessarily), but stronger nonetheless.