3rd is Trae Young at 9.8 FTA.
Kevin Durant and Joel Embiid are tied at 4th/5th with 9.1 FTA.
Milwaukee Bucks are the top free throw merchant team at 29.3 FTA.
Are the Bucks the most exciting team in the league today?
3rd is Trae Young at 9.8 FTA.
Kevin Durant and Joel Embiid are tied at 4th/5th with 9.1 FTA.
Milwaukee Bucks are the top free throw merchant team at 29.3 FTA.
Are the Bucks the most exciting team in the league today?
I haven’t watched the Bucks this year but I swear every game people bitch about calls on Giannis, its always a situation where he’s absolutely getting fouled (He’s a hard guy to defend!)
It’s like prime LeBron. You get whacked in the head and there won’t be fouls called but if you barge into the defender you’re drawing a blocking foul.
The crazy thing is that LeBron never got the friendly whistle anywhere near as consistently as Giannis, which is the opposite of what you’d expect considering he’s the face of the league. If you look at his peak and average free throw rate and compare them to players like Giannis and Butler it’s astounding what a huge difference there is.
Feel like last night was a prime example of this.
He forces contact at times but last night they had no answer and just kept hacking him every time he drove and he kept getting and 1s
But this sub sees high FTA and automatically assumes the player is a ft merchant (even the bad ft shooters lol)
As for Dame, I figure his attempts will go down he’s gotten a softer whistle this year but he’s usually around that 6-7 mark
Bigs are generally expected to take a lot more contact than the Morant’s of the world. Shaq would have fouled out entire teams if every time he got hit it was called a foul.
The physical abuse Shaq took should raise his stature in peoples eyes. Like yeah he got fat, but if you were taking the kind of beating he was, you’d want some extra cushion on you too. If he was white and the bruises/cuts showed more clearly, he’d have made Jokic’s arms look like a stubbed toe.
It’s because he forces contact. He’s so good at putting defenders in a position where they either have to foul or get out of the way and give him a free lane to the basket, and what that generally looks like is a defender getting called for basically just trying to stay in front of his man.
There’s always people who whine about calls going against their team when their team is clearly hacking the fuck out of someone, but for a whole lot of fans it just doesn’t feel right when someone’s getting a call after initiating contact despite that being 100% within the rules.
Fouling him is one of the best ways to guard him one on one, it’s either damn near a guaranteed bucket or you take your chances with a 70% ft shooter.
This is the the answer with Giannis. Dude is a physical player who requires physical D so he’s going to get fouled. And it’s also good D to put him on the line since he’s such an inconsistent FT shooter. The problem is if he shoots 80% from the stripe he ends up with 45+ on the night.
He’s been worse in recent seasons. The only anomaly was the 21/22 season when he shot a respectable 72%.
In his early days he was a decent mid-70s FT shooter but his shot deteriorated.
fouling a 70% ft shooters is awful strategy tf you talking about lmao, altho Giannis isn’t really a 70% ft shooter
honestly it’s the plays where Giannis is going full speed that feel so controversial. plenty of those could go either way, but it does feel like he gets the benefit of the doubt most of the time
he also trucks people all the damn time though
Basically teams go “would I rather watch Giannis shoot two free throws or watch Giannis gather, spin, and dunk or lay out for a layup?” And the answer tends to come pretty easy