AbeVigodaLive wrote:og15 wrote:LeBronSpaghetti wrote:Anyone who says “there was contact” to justify a foul call is a low IQ individual who’s opinions can be immediately disregarded.
Illegal contact is what determines a foul, so I'm assuming when people say that they mean illegal contact, at least I would hope so.
AbeVigodaLive wrote:There are a few things at play here...
1) "Legal?" Fine. He's gaming a flawed system.
2) He has the clout, so he's able to get away with it where others would not.
3) Conversely, he gets away with a lot more defensively than others get vs. him. And yet, Embiid can still be seen complaining every time he doesn't get the call.
4) It's simply not entertaining to watch... and 76ers/Embiid fans who claim it's entertaining (or even fine) are simply being disingenuous or rubes.
[Note: The rub is that these antics wouldn't work so well for guys like Embiid or Harden if they weren't uber-talented players to begin with. They both have it in them to be dominant players without the egregious foul baiting... ]
I haven't found it to be true that these antics don't work for lesser players. It's just that usually lesser players can't consistently create the angles and positions to draws these fouls, but when they do, they get them too.
If we look at lesser players / non-stars who are scorers though, we see that they can do similar things. Lou Williams was a master foul drawer with angles and little plays to just get the defender off balance, get a bump. Corey Maggette was an excellent foul drawer, he used the get a step, and then go up for a shot and he loved pump fakes. Kevin Martin was a master foul drawer until they took away his favorite play from being auto FT's.
Q-Rich said it like this about Maggette: "Corey took buckets and took fouls away from people. People tried to run away from them fouls, but he didn't let em"
It's ok to disagree. But I'd guess you're in the minority if you think star players in the NBA don't "usually" get a friendlier whistle... dating back 40 years or more. The NBA made a concerted effort to market star players over teams unlike other pro sports. And it's worked very well for them over the years.
As for Maggette and Williams. Both were solid to very good at drawing fouls. Lou WIlliams once got to #10 in FTAs. And Magette was #5 one season and #6 another season in attempts.
The question is whether those types of guys were fairly common or the anomaly... Embiid is very talented... very good at knowing the rules... very good at initiating contact... and very good at flopping to the ground or flailing his arms to get the foul call while being allowed to play more physically on the other end of the court than his counterparts who aren't flopping and flailing due to slight contact. It's all "legal" by the strict definition. And it's a tough watch worthy of eyerolls by most subjective measures.
All of these things can be true.
I have no debate against dislike for his playstyle, or really anything you said in your last paragraph.
I'm simply arguing against the idea that non stars couldn't do the same thing and get calls. I'm saying that stars simply have far more opportunity to do so and are usually better players (duh) and therefore more capable of making the plays.
Harden was a foul hunter since college (7.7 FTA/G to 12.9 FGA as a college sophomore). He was a foul drawer as soon as he got to the NBA and just kept maximizing his ability to draw fouls, but also getting more touches and scoring attempts to make those plays. We many times present it like these guys became stars, then the NBA started giving them more FTA, but these guys have been drawing FTA forever, it's just when they become stars there are more possessions used by them, so there are far more of the plays.
Possibly part of why we think of it this way is that we look at raw numbers and we see, "oh he only shot 3.2 FTA/G as a rookie", but that was in 22.9 mpg and he was just taking 7.6 FGA/G. His FTR though was 0.415 as a rookie and already 0.501 as a sophomore.
Embiid was drawing 7.9 FTA in 25 mpg his first season playing regular season NBA games (this is 11.2 FTA/36), there was no star clout yet, no reputation. Usually we talk about rookies/young guys not getting respect, well, except for the ones that know the tricks and get calls, so there's a big aspect of knowing tricks that factors in.
People might say, "oh Joel was a top 3 pick, they wanted to prop him up to be a star", but for some reason they didn't extend that to Ayton the #1 pick? Ayton has been terrible at foul pressure his whole career, he's even just at 1.4 FTA this season.
High Foul Drawers Are Anomalies In General I'd assume that really high foul draw players are the anomaly in general right?
I wouldn't expect the non star versions to be common either.
Foul Draw Rate vs Raw FTA That said, we would have to look at foul rate vs raw FTA/G, because a player playing fewer minutes and or having fewer scoring attempts is not going to have as many raw FTA as the stars who are getting tons of touches and taking 17, 18, 19, 20+ FTA/G.
If we simply say, "look the stars get more FTA than non-stars", yea, they should since they have the ball the most and take most of the scoring attempts. In a perfect world of reffing where there is zero star bias in calls, the stars would still get many more FTA just due to volume of scoring touches.
I used two older guys, let's look at recent players, Austin Reaves. People say things like, "Austin Reaves gets calls like a star", it's true, but Austin Reaves also creates the angles and makes the plays that star guys are able to make to get those calls, and he gets the whistle despite not being a star.
In college he drew 6.8 FTA his last season. Now his raw FTA in the NBA isn't high because he's not a high volume shot taker, but his FTR is up there. Last season he did 7.7 FGA and 4.1 FTA. Basically if he was capable of taking 18-20 FGA/G the same way, he would be a 9-10 FTA/G guy.
