This is a dumb argument. Durant did his swim through move to get cheap fouls, they changed the rules and no one rips on him for it. Steph Curry does the get in front of a defender and jump to the ground for a foul and no one says he doesn't play the game the right way. The issue with Harden is that he has a unique skillset. He can drive to the lane but instead of being quick he's strong with strong hands so he can put the ball out. Guys foul him like crazy during that which puts him to the line a ton. It drives people crazy. That was driving people crazy long before last year's 3 point foul barrage. Zach Lowe was a leader in the "Rockets are unwatchable because of Hardens' free throw attempts." It became a national narrative. Then he 3 point thing happened last year and it was "enough is enough" all of a sudden. Reality is that on his drives he IS getting fouled. However, he's the wrong type of player. We just need to accept that. The media doesn't like his style of being a strong guard as opposed to an athletic phenom like Westbrook or a smooth operator like Curry. Seriously, harden and westbrook can match up, Westbrook can get MORE free throws and you'll still hear commentary about how Harden draws too many fouls. Absolutely ridiculous. Westbrook is right there with Harden basically every year with fractions separating them. Westbrook plays the game the right way and Harden doesn't "play the game the right way." Basically Harden just needs to scream more and play angry.
I have no problem with Harden baiting guys to get them to reach out on the perimeter - and then bringing up his arms to draw contact... they reach and he takes advantage of it... that's fine... but last season or two, he started to do this little move where as the defender was working through the screen, he'd hook their arm with his off arm and pull them into him as he throws up an ugly one handed shot with the other arm.... that's crossing the line... As I said in my post, I wasnt just calling out Harden... there's tons of this crap - and plenty that gets shut down.... but given the amount of free throws Harden has taken over the last few years, it will be more evident on his stat line... Ive never been a fan of CP3 bc of his 'phantom fouls' where hed jerk his head back and collapse - with no contact - thats cheating...
Dude, they invented a rule called the Harden rule. No **** they are. They're not even trying to hide it. SIL
it's just gonna show how great of a player harden is, there was Jordan rules back then. Now we have Harden rules even the context is diff.
The cheap fouls Harden looks for are not being called and that’s a good thing. The rest is definitely concerning and unfair, however if Harden constantly looks for calls and contact instead of going for a layup or good shot even if there’s contact, I understand that refs don’t call it...a side not of course is if they just ignore it with Harden then that’s bull!!
i wish i could vote YES on that poll 20x. this is out of control, the refs are contributing to a lot of his turnovers too. Harden is in his prime right now, his stats should not be declining. He is risking injury going overboard playing through the whistle knowing he wont get the whistle and defenders are hacking the hell out of him
It's a foul to grab a player going around a screen. So literally every single time He hooks that arm it should have already been a foul because that arm is not supposed to be there to be hooked in the first place. Where is your outrage at all of these uncalled fouls?
We can argue about the length of MDA's rotations and whether some players are playing too many minutes this year (no, they are not, IMO - too early and injuries are having their impact, dammit), and there are legitimate takes that don't agree, but I don't see how anyone could argue that Harden isn't being officiated differently. He is. James has been singled out for "special treatment" by the refs. Like many here, I don't think it will last, but I sure as hell don't like it in the meantime. When it comes to the Rockets, the league sees consistency as an undeciphered word from an ancient language.
Harden has gone 6 straight games without shooting at least 10 free throws, I went back and checked and surprisingly he’s had 2 longer stretches than this where he didn’t attempt at least 10 fouls shots...he had an 8 game stretch back in 14-15 and a 7 game stretch in 15-16 last year the longest stretch of games he had where he didn’t attempt at least 10 foul shots was just 2
Are the NBA's superstar foul-chasers suddenly in trouble? ... Fewer free throws for best at drawing fouls Last season, Westbrook averaged 10.4 free throw attempts per game, second in the league behind former teammate James Harden of the Houston Rockets (10.9). Both players have seen their attempts decline dramatically this season. Harden is down to 7.9 attempts per game, while Westbrook's 5.6 represent a drop of more than 40 percent. Even when we account for Westbrook's decreased role in the Oklahoma City offense, the percentage of his plays (shot attempts, trips to the free throw line or turnovers) that have resulted in free throws is down substantially. That gives him something in common with most other players who averaged at least six free throw attempts per game in 2016-17. Beyond Harden and Westbrook, seven other players have seen their percentage of plays ending at the free throw line decline by at least three percentage points in the early portion of 2017-18. While some of these can be explained by role changes (Jimmy Butler and Danilo Gallinari, for example, are spending more time in catch-and-shoot situations with new teams, as Kyle Lowry is despite staying put in Toronto), that's insufficient to explain all of the drop-offs. Certainly, some regression to the mean should be expected for the leaders in any category, particularly over the small sample size of the season's first 10 games or so. But this decline is much larger than a similar group saw over the first 10 games of 2016-17. Then, the top 20 players in free throw attempts per game the previous season saw their free throw attempt rate fall by 0.6 percentage points -- less than a third as much as the 2.1 percentage-point decline so far for 2016-17 free throw attempt leaders. With Harden and Westbrook joined by Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kevin Durant and LeBron James, it's a change that has affected some of the NBA's biggest names. Westbrook's cause for free throw decline is unique This season's emphasis on how to officiate continuation and contact on jump shots is an obvious explanation for the drop in stars' free throw rates. Before training camp, the NBA's "points of education" clarified that a jump shot should result in a shooting foul only if the player had begun the upward motion to shoot by the time the foul was called. (On a drive a player must only have gathered to shoot before illegal contact for a shooting foul.) The change has been colloquially referred to as "the Harden rule," and indeed it appears to have cost him many of the free throws he got last season. Per Basketball-Reference.com, Harden has drawn six three-shot fouls in 11 games after benefiting from a league-high 122 of them in 2016-17. That difference alone would account for 2.8 free throw attempts per game, nearly all of Harden's decline. (Of course, some of the fouls Harden draws beyond the arc will still result in two free throws if the Rockets are in the bonus.) However, the three-shot foul was never such a big part of Westbrook's arsenal. He had just 28 last season, according to Basketball-Reference.com, so this season's total of two doesn't represent a substantial change. That accounts for less than half a free throw per game, again assuming none of the non-shooting fouls result in free throws. Instead, as George observed, Westbrook is drawing fewer fouls when he drives to the basket. According to data provided by Second Spectrum, 10.9 percent of Westbrook's drives last season resulted in shooting fouls. This year, that's down by nearly half to 8.0 percent of his drives. That change can't necessarily be attributed to a different standard for continuation -- the leaguewide shooting foul rate on drives has increased from 10.2 percent to 11.1 percent, via Second Spectrum data. And the shooting foul rate on drives for the group of players who averaged at least six free throw attempts per game last season has actually increased by the same amount. Intriguingly, something similar is true of George, whose rate of shooting fouls on drives has dropped from 12.3 percent to 6.1 percent according to data provided by Second Spectrum. (Anthony, by contrast, has seen his shooting foul rate on drives increase from 13.5 percent to 18.2 percent via Second Spectrum data. His decline in free throw rate can largely be attributed to having the ball in his hands less frequently.) Ultimately, we're talking about a handful of calls over the season's first nine games, so odds are the explanation is mostly random chance. (Based on last year's rate of shooting fouls drawn, you'd expect Westbrook to have drawn 14 of them on drives so far this season. He's actually drawn 10.) But it's understandable those missing calls would be frustrating to an Oklahoma City team that is still working to build chemistry after adding Anthony and George. All six of the Thunder's losses have come by single digits, three of them by four points or fewer. Westbrook getting back to the free throw line as often as he did last season might be enough to turn some of those close losses into Oklahoma City wins.
i like it, it will only do good to harden in the long run, hell relie less to calls and adjust his game to become even better...hes game is already more likeable i like the harden rule
yeah man, they definitively done him a favor even if his fouls were mostly fully deserved, hes forced now to become even better, i am sure hell adjust even more and become truly unstoppable
Kevin Pelton: "Some players are getting a raw deal, but Westbrook is getting the RAWEST deal." Pay no attention to the fact that Harden gets hammered every night and refs don't call those fouls because they have "the harden rule" on their mind. Thanks KP.
