Curry didn't get a single FT the last two games and managed to get score pretty well. Lebron and Durant seem to be able to score when they don't get calls. I have seen CP3 score a bunch without FTs Why can't Harden come up with something when they aren't calling fouls?
Completely false premise. Curry wasn't getting hit by us on his threes or his layups. Feel free to provide video evidence otherwise. We were playing physical body-to-body perimeter defense like they were, sure. But we weren't clubbing everyone on layups and getting away scott free. Driving into traffic isn't Curry's game. He beats you to the basket when he gets a step and finishes with the reverse. No fouls on those plays.
when the majority of your shots are 3 pters and jumpshots that would make sense wouldn't it. that speaks to more of the discipline the rockets had on defense then anything not to put him on the line
Harden is fouled on most plays. When he’s on his game, he can only be stopped by fouling him. Defenders know this and also are willing to gamble by fouling him and then being dependent on ref to call it. This naturally doesn’t always bode well for Harden and defenders know they can foul him and get away with it So you could also look at it like other teams are dependent on the refs to swallow their whistle against Harden or for refs to officiate him differently. He drives hard to the rim and draws contact. The defenders are slower than him and are out of position and end up fouling him because they don’t give up on play. If defender gets burned and then makes contact that’s a foul. His style is different than Curry. Curry relies on evading defenders so he doesn’t get fouled as much because he avoids contact.
The Rockets are a high variance team because of the high volume of threes they take and how much they depend on officiating (primarily Harden). The problem with the latter is they have zero control over the result, whereas they have complete control over how well they take threes. James Harden drawing a bunch of fouls especially beyond the arc may work in the regular season but hopefully this series taught him that it's just not going to get called. I want him to focus on finishing plays by putting the ball in the basket and not trying to find contact.
Warriors are ref-dependent too. They depend on the refs not calling any of their bullshit moving screens and all the other dirty off ball tactics they pull to get Steph and Klay wiiiiiide open.
It’s kind of amazing that we only had 25 more free throws than them, considering we nearly doubled there points in the paint.
For some reason, NBA fans have a tendency to look at the boxscore and immediately argue that if the free-throws were similar in total, the game was called well. That's just dumb and short-sighted, on multiple levels. I agree with you, points in the paint can help put things in context. Statistically, you'd think that free-throw frequency correlates with the volume of shots taken in the paint. But the aggressiveness of one team on offense and the other team on defense just can't be captured by box score stats, so this is a topic where people can just plug their ears and believe what they want, until it gets easier to actually find and use video footage. Regardless, this is hardly worth arguing about with fellow Rockets fans. I have to wonder what the agenda is of a Rockets fan trying to excuse the officiating. I have to think it's just to generate messageboard fights.
