Similar story on a ringer podcast last week with a few of their guys making their all star selections. The “host” brought up Harden and one guy when giving his justification for leaving Harden off just straight up said something along the lines of “yeah he’s been really good, but I guess it’s just my personal bias…hahaha”
its racism, its why steve nash and jokic can almost win 3 straight mvps without winning **** in the playoffs but its like pulling teeth for darker skinned nba players to win anything in the adam silver era. hell they gave brogdon rookie of the year over embiid and ben simmons rookie of the year over spida mitchell lol.. and who could forget them handing rookie of the year to lamelo ball over the more deserving anthony edwards until the players fight and get those voting privledges back than euros and lightskins are gonna make up the majority of awards winners for the next 10 years because the voters are stuck up white males who have never played sports and are super bias and racist
The guy I was referencing is black. 0% chance his stance on Harden as an all star this season is based on race.
Someone made the Shaq comparison earlier, and I think it's pretty apt. Giannis is virtually unguardable one on one so people foul him. It's nice that referees are actually officiating contact properly rather than swallowing their whistles so often as an artificial limitation on fouls. I wish Shaq had received the same treatment; he dished it out, but the beating he took wasn't fair.
Harden had 17 drives per game in his MVP season, with 10 FTA. In past two years, Luka had 20 and 22 drives per game with 7 FTA. Luka gets 11.3 FTAs in this season, and people act like he has been always been a "FT merchant". Those people of course don't mention how many more postups Luka has been getting this season. With 21 drives and 5 post-ups per game this season, Luka actually gets less FTA's proportionally than Harden in his MVP season (17 drives and 1 post up per game). Harden probably upped his FTA count also with opponents fouling his 3pt shots, which players nowadays get less.
7-18 from the stripe up to 13.3/game now - waiting for Don MacLean to tell me he "cheated the game" like he said about Harden for shooting so many FTs.
“I just feel like this style, what Harden does, is manipulating the game somehow. Almost like cheating it somehow. And I don’t really have a thought beyond that other than I’m watching something that isn’t basketball. To me, basketball is player movement, ball movement, designed plays. Not just a guy walking it up and isolating every time. That’s why I brought up that point earlier, that who else could do this? It’s not like that within the system, he’s getting all these numbers. The system is built for him.”
Ish Smith clearly slapped his arms, seems like the first action was deemed a no call, maybe should have been a charge if his shoulder went down too much but could have easily been called a block since he was moving and not in a balanced position
Most free throw attempts by season in the last 40 years. Looks like some bearded bum loser got more than his fair share of calls. What are you rejects crying about again? Giannis being 7 ft, running, dunking and winning a championship & finals MVP while having no skill at all?
