And all of KD’s shots would be standard jumpers. 

Have you watched the way the Rockets, Pistons, Thunder, Blazers and Magic play? They are all fucking foul fests, yet the nerds will tell you it’s all edgy and contested basketball. The amount of fouling the Thunder commit on one defensive possession is maddening, and on offense, they get the softest whistles in their favor. KD essentially saying the effort is being overly rewarded now. The league literally took away hand checking to restore the freedom of movement for a ball handler. Now certain teams can damn near tackling ball handlers and getting away with it.

I feel like this would make Jokic Super Saiyan or something.

20 ft hesi jumpers till the first person taps out 

Jokic would win

KD in his own special way is saying what that other nerd post here said just a little while ago about the current NBA meta - that we are FOULING baby. 

Fouls 4 Steals is the new government initiative. 

Crash dummy hoops is odee shooting hang pulls

Oh it for sure is. KD honestly cooked with this one and I bet he knows it

Like wearing pajamas in the daytime

That’s the problem, it is both. Depends on the ref crew, depends on the player, depends on the night. I feel like that’s the most frustrating thing, night to night and player to player it feels so different what standards they want to use. 

Edit: the thunder are the leading example because their defensive philosophy is basically something that used to apply to individual good defenders, but this is something that’s been happening with many defenders the past few years. 

Both. You can’t breathe too hard on a shooter without getting a flagrant but for off-ball screen navigation you could probably get away with stealing a kidney.

If you’re the thunder it’s literally both for the same player

Dort is literally one of the most easily fouled and hardest to draw calls on lol

Its both, depends if youre sga or ajay mitchell and if the defender has the “elite” defender label or not

Did you watch the Thunder last playoffs?

Dort, Caruso and Wallace were playing like it was the mid 2000s.

I think the point is two fold:

1: That if you foul 10 times, refs would call 10 fouls. If you foul 50 times, the ref may call 35 fouls. If you foul 150 times, the ref may call 60 fouls. The rationale given is that refs don’t want to call 150 fouls so there are increasing returns to fouling a lot. Therefore players can get away with murder fouling because they’ve achieved critical mass of fouls so each foul is less likely to get called.

2: If there is a massive imbalance of fouls towards one team, ref unconsciously try to “even” the call count, presumably because they are working under the assumption that teams, on average, foul about the same amount. Therefore a team who should get very few fouls get called on softer and softer offence as the officiating looks for small things to even the foul count.

This explains why OKC gets away with a lot. They foul a ton. And on the other side they know that the refs are unconsciously looking to even the score so they flop and give refs opportunities to whistle on very soft stuff. OKC leaned on that as the meta for most other teams was to foul as little as possible to avoid giving easy points on free throws.

There is obviously a hard cap to fouling a lot before all your defenders are done for the night. So presumably this can be relatively easily solved by: fouling more as a team to reduce the delta between you and OKC and reduce the soft calls, get the refs aware to adjust the whistle on heavy foulers. But the problem is that the league doesn’t want a foul fest and they have no incentives to call more fouls. Which means a team like OKC has a “king of the hill” advantage.

Both depending on how the refs feel that night.

If you’re KAT, it’s both

Offensively you can do whatever you want. Defensively you have to coddle the player otherwise it’s a foul.

Defense is strictly regulated while there’s nothing on offense

Depends on the player….

To echo others, its both, which is the issue. Off ball or trying to drive to the hoop? You can get mauled and refs will just say good luck.

Perimeter shooter and someone sneezes while walking past you? Three free throws.

Star player taking 6 steps to the hoop? Congrats here is an and 1.

It depends on which agenda you want to push really

It’s both, there’s a lack of consistency in calls and it’s annoying to watch. One second some guy slips and gets a call, the next play a player gets decked on a drive and it’s a no call.

Both. But the problem seems to be that the guys you cant sneeze on are allowed to do whatever they want on the other end.

on ball and off ball is called very differently. also even on ball - more is allowed until a player is entering a shooting motion. it’s like you can push them on the drive but once they go into a shooting motion you can’t breathe near them.

I enjoyed the more physical playoffs, I think they should call it tighter in the regular season cause it’s 82 games but loosen in the playoffs

It’s both. Some teams are allowed to get away with all sorts of shit. And, on the opposite end, some players get all the whistles they bait for.

It’s whatever you want to blame when you lose.

The NBA has always been like this. Imagine if Shaq got a fair whistle

I think they’re honestly forced to have double standards because otherwise the bigger skilled players would dominate every time

Lakers flair complaining about FTs is hilarious 😂 let me guess your rebuttal “Luka and Reaves get to the ft like the right way”

3 hall of fame baiters currently play for the Lakers.

If you think that’s bad, go ahead watch some videos of prime Shaq. Defenders were allowed to foul him 4-5 times per possession before a whistle was blown. On the other hand, had they called it straight up Shaq would have averaged 100 and been completely unguardable.

If you’re KAT, you can’t play defense on one end and you’re allowed to get prison shanked on the other

And there are random exceptions. Butler is strong as hell and gets every call, but Steph has had a terrible whistle for most of his career.

Imagine if Steph got a fair whistle

Giannis gets plenty of free throws, in an argument against that Giannis gets away with ton of push offs and bulldozing like he’s playing american handegg

At the end of the day all that shit evens out, some players are just more skilled at drawing free throws and selling contact, that has been the case for 50+ years and players get reffed differently based on a lot of things, reputation (both defense and offense), size etc that will always happen

Mention Luka and Reaves if you’re complaining

SGA has half the free throw rate of Jimmy and it’s odd you don’t mention Luka who is the most egregious in the league here

I mean Giannis gets away with about two dozen offensive fouls a game so maybe not a great example

If every single instance of physicality even with the most minimal contact got called each game would take forever and then you’d all be complaining about “foul baiting” or whatever.

Sometimes a ref doesn’t see contact, or a player just plays through it and the ref is less inclined to call something, or the defender made the right play leading up to the foul and the offensive player creates the contact and the defender is rewarded with a no-call.

Also, sometimes viewers (not saying you) think basketball can’t be physical especially in the paint, and that any and all incidental contact should be free throws.

Lebron heavily benefits from the refs, the fuck? Lmao

one of the top highlights recently was LeBron blatantly carrying for 10 seconds before throwing an assist

It pisses me off so much when the refs call a completely normal post move an offensive foul just because a big did it on a smaller forward or guard

Is hilarious you dont mention luka and reaves who get more calls than everyone you mentioned

Surely is reaves unstoppable and overwhelming physicality lol

The first 15 years of his career LeBron didn’t get shot for foul calls because he ran straight through that ticky tack bullshit contact that players now throw their heads back like they got hit with a 1-2.

Super inconsistent too.

Most obvious case of this was last year’s OKC Vs Nuggets series with Caruso guarding Jokic. If calls were just, Caruso would’ve been fouled out by half time every time but it was allowed due to size difference. There should be absolutely no universe in which a defensive matchup like that should work, yet it did.

more recently wemby as well

I think it’s a highly underrated part of the rules. Allowing smaller guys more success. People whine like everything should be equal but my view is it’s a very sensible way to do it. It makes sense to define a foul by how much you get moved and bigger guys get moved less.

Bruh, the Thunder were molesting Jokic in the playoffs last year. I’m convinced the Nuggets win that series if they called it evenly.

What about Curry? He’s manhandled every game and barely gets any foul calls because it all happens off ball. He looks like he’s been wrestling a bear after every game.

Certain players with the “good defensive player” label get to do that. Everybody else gets called for a foul

Yeah, basketballs physicality isn’t apparent on TV. Go watch a game live, and you’ll see how physical the game is.

You talk as if your team didn’t do the exact same thing. Indiana plays just as physical as OKC, especially Nesmith and Nembhard. Siakam also gets away with a lot, even back in his Raptors days, although they tend to call more on him. 

It’s because the people who were begging for 80s, 90s and 2000s basketball, absolutely did not watch 2000s basketball lol. If they did and were still begging for it, it’s because they were too young to actually understand what was going on. They were asking for their childhoods to be brought back

The main issue is the consistency, I loved some of the physical series last season, some calls were missed but it went both ways and they allowed physicality. And then later you watch Lu Dort commit warcrimes and Caruso hack players all game, OKC players pressuring dudes like crazy, almost definitely fouling in half those plays, and its like that’s cool I guess, but then on the other side certain players are getting calls from absolutely nothing, literally just jumping to the side on purpose and barely getting any contact, and then they call it. That’s annoying to watch. I think either you don’t award soft fouls like that for anyone, or you just decide to call everything. Because some of the stuff they call, won’t get called for 80% of the plays, especially if they are not stars

Yeah I’d watch that sport.

That’s been a thing for decades, it was one of Kobe’s signature moves

That’s honestly not even the worst thing, at least if its a proper contact, you can argue that you kind of tricked the defender into jumping and got him. But some of the other shit they call, its unreal. My favorite is the defender just jumping like normal, and the offensive player taking a shot swings his legs forward to hit the jumping defender. How tf is that called I just don’t know.

That’s been a rule forever, just break it down a bit. If you pump fake someone, 90% of the time they’re jumping into you. So they’re essentially blocking your lane to the basket with a mistimed up, the same as a bad reach in foul or blocking foul.

When the player is JUMPING INTO the defender, they’re initiating contact with the defender when shooting, but (usually) not leaving the space they are entitled to.

Think of it like being on a small one-lane road and you hit the mirror of another car coming the other way. Both are at fault for the contact, but there’s usually one person who clearly could’ve yielded. That’s the defender.

This is why I’ve always hated the “let them play” mentality, if we’re choosing to let fouls go, there’s literally no way to keep it even, and it just makes it a bad watch. It’s just adding more subjectivity and control for the refs to play with.

I just never understand why the NBA just decided like “you know what, we’ll just call half the fouls on bigs from now on” and everyone decided that it was ok, its been an issue for quite a while. Shaq would have shot 20-25 a game if it was called fairly. You foul a big and they don’t go down because they are big, they don’t get a foul. Then you do something smaller to a guard and its a foul ⁹⁄₁₀ times.