[NBA on Prime] Steve Nash says that OKC has “mastered the rules” and that they are “efficient with playing the referees”
I mean, he’s right, but this will annoy some people.
Steve has been right a lot
if Nash is saying this on TV, you gotta figure theres a pretty strong undercurrent of dislike for OKC’s playstyle amongst the player
Not necessarily. This is something the OKC coaching staff/analytics dep’t has cooked up, they did the cost-benefit analysis of excessive fouling’ effect on point differential and how to leverage this.
It’s technically a legitimate strategy and I think that’s what Nash is pointing out. But as many fans will tell you: OKC is not fun to watch, it’s an innately frustrating brand of basketball that’s based on the refs swallowing their whistle.
doesnt really matter if its a legit strategy or not , its becoming more and more clear that most of the league doesnt like the level to which OKC games the rules to win, and frankly, its a terrible viewing product
Yea like I said in the latter half of my comment, I do agree. I only said that Nash may not feel that way and view it as a legit strategy because of his previous comments on OKC that contextualize this one.
Yep did you see Devin Booker’s comment from a couple weeks ago? Very similar backhanded compliment sort of comments
I don’t think necessarily, I just think he’s pragmatic and understands all the factors you need to consider in being efficient on offense.
I mean Dort is out there targeting opponent stars’ knees and ankles and he’s been doing it for at least 3 seasons.
It’s on the refs at the end of the day. These dudes are paid to win and if the refs aren’t gonna call their stuff why stop
They’re the James Harden of teams
Would argue it’s more on the defense side. They are so physical from the jump it sets the bar for what’s a foul so high that most teams struggle.
I think its the disparity that hurts.
One end they cal ticky tacky fouls, and on the other end someone gets mauled but they made it so the refs swallow the whistle.
It’s like the asshole in your friend group who can say anything he wants, because “oh, that’s just Kurt being Kurt…lol…” but then when you say one thing, it’s like you just shot a puppy at John Cena’s retirement party.
Or maybe that’s just me.
It’s definitely on both. Dort, Caruso, and Shai are all prolific floppers. It’s like having three Marcus Smarts on your team. The crazy thing is it works.
Hartenstein is a world class flopper also. That video a few weeks ago of him getting “hit in the face” and drawing a technical while… not actually getting hit at all.
They act like soccer players on offense. And on defense they play like football and act surprised every time they get called for whacking people.
Marcus Smart will be very physical when defending but the moment the offensive player will give it back he will flop causing offensive foul. Im saying this as a Laker fan.
I more mean the exploiting of rules and technicalities of the wording in the rules. It’s the same playbook, just different sides of the ball
Ehhh SGA (and every other foul baiter mentioned in this thread) kicking their feet forward at the end of a jump shot to try and catch the defender’s feet is pretty lame. That’s not a natural jump shot motion. When you watch a defender go straight up and down and still the shooter lands on their feet, that’s gaming the system. Not “bad defense”.
I would love to see the ‘96 Bulls defend OKC, lol. Prime MJ, Pippen and Rodman. Oh boy.
They are the Floyd Mayweather of NBA teams. Minus the cherry picking of opponents.
Have you not seen their schedule?
They picked the schedule?
I like turtles ?
I don’t think it’s fair to put all the blame on the refs. Like most leagues, they are gradually given more subjective rules to enforce and points of emphasis to call. I’m not holding them blameless, but ultimately the officials give the league the offensive favoritism they asked for.
Pushing the rules as far as you can is gamesmanship. It does feel like one day these rules will change but doesn’t matter right now.
They should make the refs wear those meta glasses or some eyetracking shit
“Some people”
Literally just Thunder fans. We all see it.
Hey, if you were from Oklahoma, you’d be dumb too
Number 1 in lack of education
They teach from a trump bible, no cap.
They’d be really mad at this comment… if they could read
Yup. At the end of the day it’s a skill, a very frustrating skill but still a skill nonetheless.
It’s a skill at abusing the league office’s incompetence around ref management. It doesn’t look good for the league and isn’t fun to watch
If it was just about “mastering the rules” they wouldn’t be the only ones who could do it.
Reputation is just as big of a factor in how they are officiated as the actual gameplay. It’s not just mastering the rules, it’s mastering the narrative that allows it to happen.
Bingo. Not every player gets the call do slamming into another player. What’s crazy is they foul like crazy on defense, mugging the shit out of players. Shai would do 40 free throws per half if another team played defense against him like the Thunder do.
We’ve always seen great teams get away with a little extra. The warriors with their moving screens. Dray’s crazy long leash. But it was offset by Steph getting held like crazy. The Thunder get it on both ends while being incredibly talented. They’re already the best team in the league but getting the craziest whistle ever makes them insane.
100%, it also helps that a lot of their players have an individual reputation.
Exactly. Just like a pitcher known for control, gets the benefit of the doubt on a strike call, same as the high average hitter gets the favorable calls. Will be interesting with ABS coming in next year.
Exactly this. I don’t hate OKC nor the floppers/reffing abusers but it’s just a horrible look and product. IMO it’s the main reason why basketball has been on the steady decline in North American since the GSW/Cavs finals days.
It’s a terrible product right now. The league doesn’t seem to care about the crazy influx in season ending injuries. That and load management has killed interest in so many matchups. Refs are inconsistent, corrupt, and/or incompetent. The rules are bending and making it so confusing to watch.
Honestly seems straightforward to fix if they cared about creating a pure, compelling product
That we can agree on.
I mean the refs should call a foul a foul. If they have to foul them out in the 2Q several times before they get the message then do it?
As a neutral observer it’s so frustrating to watch. It feels like the teams aren’t playing on level ground
Very much so I don’t enjoy that type of basketball, but they are a great team, and it’s very effective, so fair play.
They’re the 2016 Warriors’ evil twin (except for Draymond, who is his own evil twin).
I wanna meet Draymond’s good twin
I actually disagree, it think its a hack that leverages the league necessity to entertain people against itself, which I think is very selfish and will turn a lot of the league against them potentially. But at the same time its definitely in their right to do so and they can do as they please
it’s not entertaining
Not at all lol, and more than that I think its a bad faith bending of the rules – like they ARE fouling, which is against the rules, they’re just taking advantage of the fact NBA being an entertainment ecosystem, and I think that’s a big part of why there’s so little passion for this team
definitely. they’re basically betting that the refs wouldn’t dare foul out half their starters by the start of the third or call 100 FTs per game, because nobody would want to watch it
Except if the refs did, they’d be forced to stop playing like this because no team can win giving up 100 free throws and fouling out their players; remember, every time a player is fouled out and the team only has 4 players left, they’re accessed a technical before one of their players can return to the floor so they can field 5 players.
Basically, the league office can set the tone by telling the referees to call everything, and after a month of games, OKC would be so behind in the standings that they’d absolutely have to quit doing it if they want to compete. Silver could go in front of the media and explain, “This is the medicine for foul-baiting teams, and it’s going to get worse before it gets better.”, but he won’t.
correct … adam silver came out recently and said they over emphasize the offenses with how the rules are now, putting the defense at a disadvantage. silver said they will be readjusting the rules in the offseason to make it more balance
And the NBA is progressing in a way that showcases that skill. Which I hate
Fouling every play is not a skill it’s a strategy
Prime Harden is one of my favorite players ever. top 2 if not 1
But I HATED the discourse about his foul baiting being a “skill”. Yeah he’s great at driving but being lauded for “creating contact” is lame when you see a huge amount of players getting straight up hacked and not getting calls. especially bigger guys
The Astros used to have some guys really skilled at banging a garbage can
Not to mention his foul baiting was far different from previous era of foul baiting. People claim Kobe Wade etc were foul baiting, but none of them were ever as blatant as Prime Harden.
He baited the foul, but it seemed like he got fouled, not got hit by a truck when someone touched him
They didn’t master shit, they got the media narrative going for them rn. The refs are incompetent and they do their jobs based on what the story behind the players is. That’s why we got away with a bunch of illegal screens and why Curry still doesn’t get a fair whistle to this day. “Superstar whistle” is something that people talk about because it exists
Daigneault opening admitted being like this when he tried the “permanent sub” to force refs to slow Jokic’s inbounding. It’s pretty obvious everyone on the team has a “don’t hate the player, hate the game” mentality when it comes to the rules on offense and especially on defense.
Except why can’t the rest of the league do this?
Because the refs will call the fouls that they allow OKC to get away with.
It depends on personnel a lot. You can’t just say why doesn’t every player foul bait like Luka. Because it’s not like vando would be viewed the same way in the refs eyes. You need to have a reputation that goes a long with your defense, guys like AR don’t have that. It’s like all of OKC’s perimeter defenders have the reputation of being strong physical defenders, and that helps the team overall.
They do try, but they don’t have the balls to continue doing it despite the calls. You have to commit and get refs to swallow the whistle.
“Too committed to real basketball’
Because you need insane depth to pull this off. Most teams have 1 or 2 all defense players. So if they get in foul trouble, they get benched and the defense takes a massive hit. OKC has like 5 legit all defense players and it’s impossible for all of them to be in foul trouble. In fact even when in foul trouble they can stay aggressive because of the depth in defense.
Of course. OKC sends more footage to league offices than anyone else. They’re not shy about it. They get treated differently on defense than anyone else.
It’s a better way to phrase it in all honesty vs how 80% of this sub was describing OKC during the offseason
Because he’s sugar coating and mincing words. They’re cheating the game and playing unethical basketball. They’re not doing anything illegal, but they sure as fuck aren’t playing within the spirit of the game. Whether you give a fuck about that or not is another story, but the facts aren’t really debatable.
Damn pretty crazy to hear that out loud from an analyst, but at the same time…..we all kinda know he’s right…..
Analyst talk about stuff like this all the time. Always have, it’s seen as a skill.
That’s true to some extent, but OKC definitely seems to be taking it to another level imo
He’s 100% right. I’d love to see the reactions from the Thunder fans I’ve been telling that their team is gaming the system and it makes for a shitty product, i wonder if they’ll tell me that Steve Nash is wrong too.
They’ll find some angle to be victims again, don’t worry
hahah yup, that steve nash guy definitely doesn’t know what he’s talking about - in all seriousness I do think its a bummer because the Thunder are a great team, but its getting to the point where their play style and hype are turning people against them - I wish they would just play a little more straight up and like the rest of the league
I’ve heard a number of people talk about this this year.
There have always been teams that would foul a lot and bet they’d get away with it enough it’d be worth it. The Pistons, the Grizzlies, lots of teams have been accused of “hitting the game with an ugly stick.”
Supposedly, OKC is just the first to really apply analytics to it in a disciplined and effective way, figuring out exactly what sort of fouls you can get away with most, which are worth it, and train their players according to their conclusions.
Supposedly a number of teams are in the early stages of playing copy-cat on this.
The last part is the really shit part. Because it’s going to trickle down to junior basketball and become a shit show. Arghhhh
Nothing wrong with what he’s saying. It’s true. And in any sort of game, whatever the rules are, there will be ppl who push those rules to the max and exploit them whenever they can. With the nba, i just wish they’d allow a more physical game. I just hate seeing shai drive, get the ever so slightest body contact, he goes OH, flops, and it’s foul shots. It’s just sucks to watch. This goes for others like austin reeves, luka, dame, harden, etc.
Kinda?
hahah trying not to piss off to many people here breh
We know its not mastering the rules.
Its blatant ref-ball.
On defense they are allowed to do all the fouls, holding grabbing and all.
Then for FTA its all bs calls.
Sga is not even flopping like Marcus Smart, being smart like cp3 or holding arms like Harden.
Sga is getting foul calls where there is no touch.
Sga calls are all bailouts.
Amazon team is incredible. Pure hoops.
Damn pretty crazy to hear that out loud from an analyst
This is how analysts should be honestly not just random personalities
And in response, the referees should improve.
Can we bring some sanity back to what a travel is at the same time? I stopped watching the NFL because I found it so exhausting watching refs and commentators debate whether an obvious catch was a catch or not. We need refs to just use some judgment and be good at it.
Traveling, carrying, moving screens, and foul -baiting/flopping. If the NBA started calling those 4 rules more reliably, I’d be so much happier.
Yeah. The carrying and traveling hurt to watch. It’s like watching a different game.
It would be like if soccer players could do hand balls in pros. Terrible viewing product.
The best that Adam Silver can do is get the refs to announce the gambling website sponsors when they review challenges.
There was an idiot who kept hounding me on Reddit about how I’m stupid for thinking the Grayson Allen travel a few days ago was not clean. Please bring rules back to this game
The official NBA Instagram account put that out as a “footwork” highlight. The league is done. Well done.
Thank you Steve, need more people calling out silvers nba.
Silver heard the complaints and decided to add another play in game and NBA cup along with ugly courts and more jerseys nobody likes
im sure its just a massive coincidence that after selling NBA streaming right to Amazon, Peacock, NBC, etc that the FT rate went up league wide
I’d love to see a study about media rights deals signing and the amount of ads, and the amount of calls.
And decided that 11 different streaming services to follow your 1 team wasn’t enough so sold 5 of your team’s games ever season to YT premium.
Everytime it happens in a thread OKC and flairless account flood in saying we’re crazy
Anyone with eyes and who actually watches games knows that the whistles aren’t the same. OKC is allowed to do anything on defense.
I actually don’t care that much about the SGA foul baiting, I care more how the OKC d is allowed to foul incessantly on defense and then for some reason people call that good defense. Then when you compare it to what SGA does on the opposite end it just feels really lame
This always frustrates me about Caruso. He was able switch onto Jokic last year because the refs decided Caruso could do all the mauling he wanted against Jokic like he was some sort of make a wish kid.
It really is annoying that once you get a reputation (team or player) for being a scrappy or physical defender, they let you get away with more for no reason whatsoever
I’ve always called that the Aaron Craft phenomenon. Crazy what that man got away with in college
I’VE BEEN SAYING. That matchup should not be so favourable for Caruso in any possible multiverse. Yet it was.
People who have played back-to-the-basket basketball know how impossible it is to score against a defender who fouls basically every play.
At that point you’re only scoring if 1.) you’re guarded one on one with no help defense at all and 2.) you outweigh the other person by at least 50-60+ pounds.
Caruso’s constant fouling combined with OKC’s elite defense made it impossible for Jokic to do anything
Its frustrating to watch your players get mugged for 10 possessions in a row by literally the entirety of OKC, and then they touch Shai with a hair and get whistled. SGA gets a lot of the hate because that differential is so noticeable, but like you said its really that for whatever reason all 5 OKC players on the floor at any given time are allowed to do whatever they want.
Especially Dort. Dude plays like a linebacker and then flies across the court when someone nudges him back. It’s obnoxious.
It is really this. People already expect SGA to get some whistles. It happened a lot in the NBA and especially for stars. But to have an unfair treatment as a team is just bad to watch as a viewer.
It really got highlighted during the Nuggets Thunder series where Jokic, even though he flopped here and there, is not really receiving most of the right calls despite the “physical defense” being played on him. Caruso and iHart should have been fouled out in many games that series.
I get downvoted every time I bring it up, BUT defense in NBA is legit just based on reputation. If you have a good defensive reputation, you’ll get away with a lot more fouls, while if you have a reputation of being a bad defender or a young and coming up player, you’ll 100% get called for the foul which the ref just let go for the defensive reputation player.
If you want to see examples of it, just watch Gobert on defense, and the amount of leeway refs give him, vs to any other rookie center.
It’s true that a lot of them are flairless, I wonder if people are ashamed to rep them at this point because they know how embarrassing some of this is lol
“Efficient with playing the referees”. So admirable.
Gonna upset a lot of people on here lol. They really do need to somehow fix all the foul baiting. I don’t know what the solution is, but people are not going to games to see Austin Reaves or SGA shoot 20 free throws. I don’t care if they are all legitimate fouls, it is still boring. It’s the #1 issue holding back growth.
Baseball recognized game times were way too long and, instead of being stubborn, implemented a pitch clock. The game is once again growing. They’re implementing ABS next year as well. Gotta innovate with the times
Nash wasn’t primarily talking about foul baiting tho. He’s talking about how OKC goes for steals A LOT to the point that the refs cant call every foul, so they get so many steals that way
Which is honestly worse. No clue how they improve upon this though outside of robotic refs.
Edit: you guys are misunderstanding what I’m saying, ofc the solution is to call the fouls, but it’s painfully clear the human officials have a bias towards how OKC plays defense and allows them to get away with this. If the system was automated and removed human error the fouls would be called properly.
No clue?? Just call the fouls seems pretty simple, they do it against other teams. Boston is a good example, last season they fouled less than anyone, this season based on personal and OKC’s success they changed their strategy be more aggressive go for more steals, results Boston is one of the highest fouling teams in the league, but OKC is right in the middle at fouls CALLED per game.
Just call the fouls. In our second game against the Jazz, the refs called 5 fouls in a row and 4 of them were on the same inbound play (numbers may not be exact, but it was a lot). It was ridiculous and a lot of them were soft, but we were also probably thinking “they can’t possibly call all of them”. But the refs did.
Call the fouls. Putting the players into foul trouble fixes the issue.
He did touch on the other side of it, too:
And then offensively, they do the same thing, they rip and go, Shai’s a great foul…creator. So they’re really efficient at playing the referees.”
We’ve seen teams hunt for fouls on offense. We’ve seen teams get away with excessive fouling on defense. But we’ve never seen a team do both this effectively
Feel like the solution is to just …..don’t call those fouls lol a lot of them are pretty easy to see as exaggerations in real time.
I mean they don’t call these fouls for a lot of other stars in the league. Ant has one of the worst whistles ever. Curry, Jokic, Mitchell, Tatum, etc… there’s a lot of stars with bad whistles
Ant and Steph have some of the worst whistles I’ve seen honestly in NBA history.
Its cuz they just ball
They don’t embellish contact and they’re still trying to score.
Refs wait to see if A) the player goes flying, and B) if the ball goes in. If neither of those things happens, they’ve determined the contact must have been marginal. Some guys have made sure that they go flying every time, some guys just throw up a bad shot that misses. Some do both.
Ant and Steph do neither most of the time.
I’d throw Bron in there. He flops from time to time but he used to get absolutely mauled on every drive.
Bron only flopped regularly in Heat. After that he changed into ref complainer, sometimes because he’s legitimately mauled, sometimes because it’s his new meta.
Yeah I’m totally with you bro – its jacked up that players are getting disadvantaged for just playing real basketball lol – I’m a celtics fan and we just went through this with JB not getting to the foul line despite literally get hacked all the time bc he chooses not to flop
Tatum has the shortest leash for a guy who is overall chill.
Dude can’t even clap without getting techs.
but then those players will play worse and the NBA cant have that
Other players will fill that space. There are many dudes out there who can aim for the basket first instead of going for the flop first.
There’s people here who like okc style of play?
Yeah free throws in general slow the game down so much. It’s an integral part of the game, but I totally agree it holds the league back.
Like baseball, it’s still boring and slow as fuck, but at least they’ve tried. Who wanted to see 5 pitching changes an inning? Stupid.
Steve (and Dirk) can teach university courses on being on the wrong end of refball so he knows what he’s talking about
Yeah the Thunder get away with stuff like the 2000s Spurs, and the uncrowned Champ Steve Nash Suns got it the worst
steve nash deserved 2007 so bad but the league said no
They foul and the refs don’t call it.
And they fall/grimace with the slightest contact, then the refs call it.
Shai O-face™️
the okc special
Caruso defending Jokic in the playoffs last year stills disgusts me. He bear hugged him half the game
And everyone just acted like it was great defense. He fouled every play
That’s what’s crazy. You’re telling me that Caruso is actually better at defending a top15 all time 300 pounds center than Gobert, Zubac, AD, Bam, Gannis etc… ? That’s not possible unless the ref allow the smaller player to foul and call offensive foul on the center when he tries to be physical himself.
you mean “defending”. Caruso did play an entirely different sport and for whatever reason refs were fine with it.
Feels like there is an unspoken rule amongst refs that fouls against chungus bigs dont count.
This shit ruined basketball for me. It was so obvious they were off ball fouling to prevent any passing. Iso ball should not be the preferred way to play by the refs.
That’s kind of just Caruso defending a big. I still remember Game 5 against the Bulls in ‘22, he clear as day hacked Giannis’ arm about four times in five minutes and I don’t think a single foul was called. And to some extent that’s just every guard defending a big; smaller guys get away with a lot in those matchups.
but if you breath near Shai its 2 FTs
It’s egregious tbh, they’re a great team, shouldn’t need to get that whistle (and they don’t, they’re great already without that)
He’s right lol. If OKC played the defense they do against Shai, most of them would foul out.
If the nba enforced the no flopping rule, shai would foul out. Crazy that the refs still decides the game of nba. In 2025
Actually flops are technical fouls so he would be ejected after two, not foul out
This is the truth but Thunder fans keep saying how he doesn’t average a high FTA. The reason is because you can’t even play aggressive defense on him lol so why would players bother to guard him with intensity and rack up on personal fouls?
Multiple times tonight spurs defenders just let him have open shots.
Funny enough, a successful defense against Shai I’ve seen a couple times is pretty much just pulling the chair under him. He braces for contact, defender jumps away and he goes falling to the floor in shock. Pretty funny to watch
Fine but this is a bad product for fans, who are the only reason the NBA works as a concept.
NBA doesn’t need fans. Just needs a hand full of of gamblers
Boring ass team, lame ass stars, bullshit basketball, lame market and a city no one cares about.
Literally the worst thing to happen to the NBA.
The euphemisms people are using to describe OKC’s “advantage” with the referees are getting increasingly ridiculous. It’s hard to talk about the team without addressing it, and most analysts don’t want to sound like haters, so they use colorful language like this.
I got frustrated listening to Zach Lowe’s most recent podcast with Kirk Goldsberry. Kirk is acting like OKC is the second coming of Moneyball. He said the Thunder have figured out fouling like the 00s Spurs figured out the corner three. And yet he couldn’t really explain it any deeper than that. Feels like everybody is too afraid to call a spade a spade because Presti is such an analytics darling, so they’re praising it as some new market inefficiency despite not being able to adequately explain what the Thunder are doing differently to gain such an edge.
I think it’s a little awkward for analysts because the Thunder genuinely are a great, great team, but at the same time most seasoned basketball fans watching understand they’re probably not quite as good as some of the numbers indicate, so it’s a delicate balance between respecting them and acknowledging they might be benefitting from a certain advantage - its also awkward because their success is putting some pressure on the league as more and more people notice that their play style is not really the best aesthetically and maybe even unfair
This is well said.
I don’t think the league will care as long as the Thunder draw ratings. If people tune out because they find FTs (or the Thunder’s particular style of play) boring or unsavory, I think that’s what will ultimately put pressure on the league.
I know Adam Silver didn’t think the pitch clock was necessary because longer stretches between pitches gave fans more time for micro-betting, but I have to imagine every league commissioner noticed MLB’s ratings boom after they sped up the game. Feels like the NBA is going in the wrong direction with the league-wide increase in FTs this season (and the increasingly long replay reviews). Maybe they can adopt the “shoot 1 to make 2” model.
Yeah I think Adam (or maybe his successor lol) need to accept that the NBA is in an excellent position financially going forward and focus more on the making sure the league and basketball and the fan experience is as good as possible – You make a good point about MLB and game speed. One of my nits is that anyone associated with the league need to stop talking about betting - you’re just distancing people from the real product which is high order competition. I think the NFL was in a similar position roughly a decade ago (albeit for different reasons) and they nailed it by just focusing on football over everything else. Nobody questions competition in the NFL and they have the most die hard fans in the country. NBA needs to focus less on growing the game (they’re doing great) and focus more on appreciating their fans. Also shoot 1 make two would be amazing.
Remind me last year during a podcast nick wright pretty much said : Sga will get free throw anyway so might as well go hard and give him a “real foul” .
Wasnt expecting someone saying that.
100% boring ass basketball. Doesnt matter how good they are. Cant root for such a shitty way to win. SGA being compared to MJ LOLOL my ass
Realest comment in the thread
Couldn’t agree more. I have many friends who are sport fans- of all kinds of sports. No one watches the nba. It is BORING
People treat their 6+ point lead in defensive rating over the second-best defense as “just good defense, bro” rather than recognizing it as a massive statistical outlier that supports the argument they’re officiated differently on defense.
I hate the idea of… “They can’t call every foul…”
Like why the fuck not. Call every foul for one game and they won’t do it again.
If refs called all the obvious fouls on OKC.. They would have lost to Denver in the playoffs. They had clear weaknesses last season.
They have leveled up this year though. Which makes the whistle more egregious. Shai is often defended like he’s coated with poison.. While other superstars have hands all over their body all game long. It’s a very big deal cause it’s super tiring for players to deal with “hands on” defense.
Shai’s career is on easy mode currently with a couple of cheat codes activated.
What CP3 mentorship does to a team
YES! I hate him
This game is the CP3 mentorship championship
Can we not rewrite things? Can we not refer to flopping as “foul-creating?”
We need to fight against that shit, not try to legitimize it.
SGA and OKC are unwatchable
When you think about it this is the greatest skill an NBA player can have due to how much impact reffing has on the game.
So dumb though
Like pitch framing in MLB, lol
Oklahoma City stole the SuperSonics and The Legion of Boom.
The Legion of Boom would be proud.
The Seahawks were 20x more enjoyable television than OKC, a true heel, but you do get to hate your rival
For real, I still loved the Legion of Boom even as a Broncos fan lmao
everybody knows this. OKC fans throw around ft stats knowing their team can hack others but others can’t do it back
Agree with him, they are best at gaming the refs
I mean this is obvious to anyone with eyes but it does mean more coming from an ex NBA superstar analyst.
Ref-ball masterclass
Mastering rules won’t exactly help ratings
I feel like I’ve heard this from media a lot. They were early in the “foul a lot and just accept it so we can turn people over” strategy. They drive to the rim hard. They play physical.
It’s a good analysis
He’s right, you know.
A foul creator
Is it more FT = More Ad revenue so that it meet ends. Is this the private equity playbook in the nba, you know as they are gunning for buying college athletics
The refs are the #1 problem with the nba.
They clearly pick winners and losers. Like when the suns went to the finals they had decided that giannis would win. Its fine to play like a linebacker and nobody is allowed to defend him. Hes the special boy.
He is chafing now because he doesnt have that rediculous refs love he had before. He is old news. He Will never make the finals again by design.
The Lakers will be forced into a deep playoff run because they had the mavs move Luka over. The mavs got a 1st round pick for the price of destroying a team.
They know that the warriors are falling away as steph gets older and they know they need to replace LeBron.
I know this is all insane conspiracy but the NBA is the most corrupt sports organization in existence and refs can decide literally any game.
I’m still tilted from the scott foster riggage in the finals. Pacers should have won.
Felt like the refs played a big role in the OKC v Denver series too.
It’s about time. You know others wanna say stuff. I can only figure that critiquing the officiating like that is a big no no for these guys.
Foul… creator
I’ve seen 10+ full games for OKC, as a neutral I can comfortably say they’re coached amazingly, prepared like crazy and probably have Presti like nerds giving amazing analytic edge.
They play physical as hell and get away with a LOT. Come playoff time though the whistles against them will balance out and that changes a lot. They do a lot of little fouls on almost every single play that seems to confuse the refs.
No they dont, they’ve been playing this way since last season. The refs refuse to call their mugging, even in the playoffs they abused it.
Come playoff time though the whistles against them will balance out and that changes a lot.
Ask Jokic how that played out last playoffs
Yea not sure what’s confusing, like they just watched 4 fouls happen just call one of them
Yup and I feel like everyone forgets their playoffs last year was not super dominant compared to other high-win teams. I do think their style doesn’t translate to the playoffs even though they were able to pull it off last year – we’ll see, definitely a better team this year but also some stiffer competition in the west
Pretty funny no one with the okc flair is in the comments. Steve Nash is saying what we’re all saying. In the game threads okc flairs just being saying the dumbest stuff ever
“Shai’s a good foul creator.” 💀
That’s not basketball 🏀
How the league doesn’t review flopping techs after the game is beyond me. It’ll make the product infinitely better and lower the amount the refs are gamed
Fuck okc
Love the way he put it. The real issue isn’t okc using that advantage - teams should do what they need to win within the rules. It’s on the NBA to stop being shithouse.
NBA referees should be replaced by AI, it is totally viable