This guy is pretty anti-Houston so for even him to see it means that we aren't just biased fan boys. I mean, how are we as fans supposed to react to something like this? I keep looking for evidence the NBA is backing away from "favoritism" but the more I look, the more I see. It's heartbreaking.
we all know that players of certain magnitude can get away with borderline calls especially if it is not egregious and does not directly allow them to score (i.e pushing someone off which leaves them open for a layup without doing anything else) I think the rockets may get some of those calls whistled on them bc of what happened last year in the playoffs. The Rockets called out a ref and demanded he be banned from calling their games (namely Harden). Any kind of retribution in the playoffs would have been scrutinized but no one is following that story in the following season
@SamFisher https://official.nba.com/video-2019-20-points-of-education/ The first video shows that the NBA is emphasizing illegal contact by offensive players on the perimeter. The gray area here is whether Harden's move counts even when he is not extending his arm to push off. I think the embellishment of the contact by Milwaukee defenders was the difference, since part of the determination for the refs is to decide if the contact was "marginal" or not.
Are they doing this just for harden on his step back 3? I would guess probably. Partly because only harden is doing it on step back 3s, but should be the same rule for guys driving to the basket
Those were definitely not push offs. Arms have to extend out for it to be a push off. If they call these push offs, pretty much every NBA superstar is going to have reevaluate their offensive game.
On the firs 3 that was waived off, the ref was talking to Harden about extending his leg, not pushing off.
