was surprised i didn't see a thread on this: https://www.usatoday.com/story/spor...n-calls-dangerous-closeouts-season/691158001/ can we retroactively fine bruce bowen? should harden just retire? or...will the nba just be full of crap again?
yes, if they were actually fining for flopping, LeFlop would be a couple million dollars lighter by now.
I think the “aggressive closeout” thing will be next to impossible to enforce, some of these guys are just huge and have gigantic shoes and it happens. I do not think Zaza did what he did to Leonard on purpose. The Harden rule, much easier to enforce, he stops getting free throws for that nonsense and it’s ball out of bounds, non-shooting foul. Harden then has to adjust his stupid-a** play and the league is better for it.
i don't even think it's a non-shooting foul. it's either a no-call or an offensive foul, imo. that's why harden's so ridiculous to me. yes, ginobili, monta ellis, wade, and others used some of these tactics prior to harden, but he basically built an all-nba resume on the back of treachery. i'm still guessing these things are going to be disallowed...for people not named james harden.
I agree that’s what it should be, no call or even offensive in the case of Harden. I’m going off of what they did with the swing through move though, which was turn it into a non-shooting foul. I assume since it’s often a judgmenent call, that’s the easy compromise.
yeah, not to completely belabor the point, but i'm not even sure how subjective it is. if you read the rules about legal guarding position, it's clear the nba simply drifted over time away from the rules, and the convention now doesn't match the intent of the rules as written. it's why you hear so many announcers and fans say things like "well, his feet aren't set, so that's a block." that's not the rule. the feet set thing was just a convention developed to ENSURE that a charge occurred (if you're not moving, you can't be whistled). the problem is that people (including, unfortunately, referees) started bastardizing the logic and suggesting that it CAN'T be a charge if the defender isn't stationary. simply not true. guys like harden took this and ran. he gets a guy on his hip, then lurches into him and chucks up a lame shot. but running alongside someone isn't illegal, and nobody wrote rules intending for defenders to have to vacate areas of the floor so the offensive player can get there. the swing-through stuff was already legislated (they cracked down on kobe in no time, i might add), but because harden utilizes it on layups, they somehow forgot they had closed this loophole. as i've said many times before, the mishandling of the block/charge has led to lots of problems and a less watchable game. we like to see attempts at blocked shots, we get fewer of those. we hate to see folks running under airborne players, but the way the rules are enforced, it seems like a smart play. they don't clean it up because they're worried of returning to the early 90s in terms of defenses getting ahead of offenses. but i think cleaning up the handchecking solves a lot of that by itself. time to clean up the rest.
I've played thousands of basketball games, from pickup, to league, to a little HS. I can't recall one instance of me closing out like Bowen did. Ok, Zaza has 8 inches and about 60 lbs on me but so are thousands of large basketball players and I rarely see that happen.