FINALLY, we’re getting more and more people to point this out. Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr brutally and justly called out the NBA for how pathetic basketball has become in regard to the sheer number of fouls called these days.
Why even have defenses if you’re just going to call fouls on players for defending, Adam Silver?
In what has become a very sad trend for the great game of basketball, another notable figure, who this time happens to be the Warriors head coach Steve Kerr, has come out and lambasted the NBA for how soft the league has become and how easy it is for these players to sell fouls and utterly destroy the flow of the game. And, as you should know full well by now, I completely and wholeheartedly support everything Steve Kerr said.
It really is pathetic how soft the NBA has become with these fouls and selljobs.
For those of you who didn’t watch the Warriors’ 120-114 loss to the defending NBA champion Denver Nuggets, one of the biggest takeaway from the games was not that the Warriors are now 15-15 and just a .500 team a few days away from the new year, but rather that the Nuggets have 32 free throws and the Warriors had 20 of their own!
Yes, these two sides had so many fouls called on them that they combined for 52 free throw attempts, while Nikola Jokic lead the way with 18 free throw attempts just for himself (to which he made a personal best 18/18). Now, you may be wondering why this game was so physical and aggressive, or how the refs lost the handle on a matchup between two sides who really aren’t rivals in the slightest?
Well, you would be wondering for the rest of your days if you thought that as this game wasn’t physical, aggressive, or even tense at all. It was actually a pretty tame mid-season game between two teams, who as I mentioned a second ago, are not rivals in the slightest. So, why was there so many fouls called? Simple. It’s because you CANNOT DEFEND in today’s NBA.
Don’t believe me? Here’s an exact quote from Steve Kerr after the game wrapped up, “I have a problem with the way we are legislating defense out of the game. It’s what we’re doing in the NBA. The way we’re teaching the officials, we’re just enabling players to b.s. their way to the foul line.” And I agree with him 100%!
There are SO MANY more bullshit fouls called these days than at any point in NBA history, and it makes watching basketball akin to watching wet paint dry. I get if there’s actually a foul and the defender actually impeded the offensive players’ ability to shoot, but a defender can’t even place a hand on an offensive player or risk getting either two free throws against or a “and-1” situation. And this scenario happens at least 40 times IN EVERY SINGLE GAME ACROSS THE LEAGUE!
Sure, you can look back and see that the highest number of free throw attempts given in the last 10 years is smaller on average than it was during the early 2000’s (which was one of the best periods of basketball IMO with the Lakers dynasty, Spurs dynasty, Celtics Big-3, the early formation of the Heat dynasty, and the one-off Pistons championship all happening during this decade), but these were actual fouls being called.
They had to invent rules to prevent the Hack-A-Shaq from happening on big, but rather poor free-throw shooting centers (such as Shaq), hand-checking, the defensive 3-second rule was banned during the middle part of the decade as the defenses were extremely formidable.
Nowadays, defenses are merely players standing on their own side of the court and PRAYING that the refs don’t call them on fouls for just touching the opposition as they fire off near-uncontested 3-pointers. In other words, the NBA today sucks to watch.
Oh, and if you just think this is “old heads” who played in the decade and beyond I talked about, then perhaps this quote from Steph Curry after the game to wrap of this article will change your mind, “It does cater to the guys who can sell calls…Like tonight, you feel like there’s physicality on one side, and then kinda ticky-tack on the other. Consistency is key when it comes to understanding how you can defend. It was tough tonight; it slowed the whole game down.”
Do I need to say anything more if the greatest shooter of all-time…who has benefited THE MOST from these new rules…is saying things like this?
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