This might be a blessing in disguise. Harden gets bad rep for being "lazy" on defense and those foul calls. This year he will have more energy on defense, and he can focus on looking for best shots instead of taking this shots that have no chance of going in. So his shooting % will go up. People will really see how elite Harden is as a scorer. If Rockets win enough games Harden will have another shot at MVP, haters will have to look for other stupid excuses.
This is really no different than the Durant sweeping-arm foul. It's still a foul, but they are saying he's not really in the process of shooting the ball. Thus, non-shooting foul. btw: it will still result in free throws when Rockets are in the penalty. Sounds like their point of emphasis will be if an arm is hit by the defender before the player has both hands on the ball, then he's not really in the process of shooting, but rather in the process of gathering the ball to shoot. Lou and Harden were quite adept at pulling up through contact with their shooting arm, but while the ball was in their off-arm only. Contact would continue through the shot, but contact started during process of gathering.
Harden is a smart enough, talented enough, and athletic enough to adjust. He was using what was available to him. He'll test it out early but I'm confident in his ability to adjust and thrive.
Maybe this will actually encourage refs to call the foul a foul. Instead of swallowing their whistle because they don't want Harden to automatically shoot free throws. James only got 50% of those calls. It either ended up in freethrows or a turnover
It's fine with me if they assess a common foul because that will just run up the team fouls of the opponents. It's fine with me if they don't call fouls where the shooter is obviously trying to draw contact. What will not be fine is they just stop calling fouls on Harden's drives, though. He clearly gets raked across the arms all the time when he's driving. That's a foul. Call it a common foul if you don't think he was in the shooting motion, but CALL IT.
Will the refs actually manage to follow through on intentions and call games this way? I'm skeptical. I've heard before about how they'd crack down on moving picks, flopping, etc and after a month or so it's like no one ever said anything. Btw, are we doing name and shame for flopping this year?
That's what I'm afraid of too, but surely most refs will still know when to call most fouls, yet all it takes is a select few that do choose to treat Harden in this way and it can affect key games.
Was watching Derozan 5 minutes and they called literally everything in his favor even though they were already abusing the Sixers ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Yeah I was watching that game to. He was getting all types of touch fouls. He attempted more FTs tonight than Harden has all season long.
Yeah, he has always been in top 3/4 for ft per game last couple of years but seems like Harden is not getting some shooting fouls while others (like Derozan) are still getting everything...meh
