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Few aspects of basketball capture the joy of the game like great passes. The most exciting ones require communication, improvisation and a little luck. This year’s N.B.A. finals will feature one of the sport’s best at getting the ball to his teammates: Denver’s Nikola Jokic. Can you see the court like the pros? Try to […] More
Curry’s 50 points were the most ever in a Game 7, helping Golden State survive a contentious first-round series with Sacramento.SACRAMENTO — The Golden State Warriors prepared for the finale of their first-round playoff series with the Sacramento Kings by gathering for an off-day film session on Saturday on an upper floor of Chase Center, their home arena in San Francisco, with a panoramic view of the bay.Coach Steve Kerr likes to stage his film sessions there when the space is available. Otherwise, he said, the team is stuck “in the dungeon down below,” outside its locker room. He was grateful for the open space, especially ahead of Sunday’s Game 7. It was a therapeutic experience.“I do think there has to be a sense of perspective,” Kerr said, “even if it’s just a nice view and some sunshine and a chance to breathe and relax between games. That can make a difference.”Something else can make a difference, too: Stephen Curry. No one seemed more Zen on Sunday than Curry, who led the Warriors to a series-clinching, 120-100 victory by skewering the Kings in every conceivable way on his way to 50 points — an N.B.A. record for a Game 7. He sank parabolic 3-pointers. He drove for layups. He toyed with defenders. And he sent scores of Kings fans streaming into the streets of Sacramento before the game had ended.“Sublime,” Kerr said.“Total domination,” Warriors forward Draymond Green said.“A joy to watch,” guard Klay Thompson said.Curry, Thompson and Green have spent years demolishing opponents as one of the N.B.A.’s most celebrated cores. The Kings, on the other hand, were making their first postseason appearance since 2006. They had youth and energy. The Warriors have championship DNA.“It was a great time to put it all together,” Curry said. “There’s still nerves and anxiousness and anticipation before a big night. But when we get out there, our experience takes over.”Curry had 20 points in the first half on Sunday.Kyle Terada/Usa Today Sports Via Reuters ConCurry, who arrived at the Golden 1 Center in an all-black ensemble, as if dressed for a wake, shot 20 of 38 from the field and 7 of 18 from 3-point range. He also had eight rebounds and six assists.“What an incredible all-time performance,” Thompson said.Golden State, the No. 6 seed in the Western Conference, will face the seventh-seeded Los Angeles Lakers in a conference semifinal, starting in San Francisco on Tuesday. The Lakers eliminated the second-seeded Memphis Grizzlies in their first-round series on Friday.“To do this for a decade, it’s incredible,” Kerr said of his core players. “The energy that it takes to fight off challengers year after year, and have to prepare and win games, and do it over and over — there’s a reason these guys are Hall of Famers and champions.”The Warriors and Kings franchises have long been based less than 100 miles apart, but for much of the past decade they have produced very different brands of basketball — opposite brands of basketball, in fact.As the Warriors busied themselves by winning championships (four), playing in N.B.A. finals (six) and re-engineering the way basketball is played thanks to the Splash Brothers (Curry and Thompson), the Kings spent the past decade-plus scuffling through a desert of futility that had them bordering on irrelevance.Their overhaul began last season when they acquired Sabonis, an All-Star center, in a deal with Indiana. It continued over the off-season when they signed the reserve guard Malik Monk in free agency, traded with Atlanta for Kevin Huerter and hired Mike Brown, one of Kerr’s assistants, as their coach.Sure enough, led by De’Aaron Fox, their All-Star point guard, the Kings went 48-34 during the regular season, christening each victory by shooting a beam of purple light from the roof of their arena. “Light the Beam!” became a rallying cry, helping to bury — if not completely erase — the dysfunction of years past.On Saturday night, ahead of Game 7, Brown dined at a Sacramento-area restaurant with his partner’s son. A small parade of young boys approached their table to ask Brown some incisive questions about the team’s players. They asked about Sabonis’s right thumb, which he had fractured during the regular season. They asked about Fox’s broken left index finger. They asked if the first-year forward Keegan Murray would be ready to shoot in Game 7.“And one of the kids was a Warriors fan, so they started ribbing him,” Brown said. “And he was like: ‘No, I’m not! No, I’m not!’ But he had a Golden State Warriors hat on.”More than anything, Brown said, he could sense their excitement — a type of postseason anticipation that Sacramento had not experienced in years.Sacramento guard De’Aaron Fox impressed in the first playoff appearance of his career, even though the Kings lost the series. Golden State struggled to defend him because of his speed and sharpshooting.Kyle Terada/Usa Today Sports Via Reuters ConAs for the Warriors, their roster seemed to constantly be in a state of flux during the regular season. Curry injured a shoulder and sprained an ankle. Andrew Wiggins, their starting small forward, left the team in mid-February citing personal reasons and missed the final 25 games of the regular season.Kerr, meanwhile, struggled to strike a balance between securing a playoff berth (no sure thing) and developing young players like Moses Moody, Jonathan Kuminga and James Wiseman, who was eventually traded midseason. Ultimately, Kerr kept leaning on the usual suspects — Curry, Thompson and Green, a defensive stalwart — as the postseason came into sharper focus.The Warriors welcomed Wiggins’s return for the start of the playoffs, then lost their first two games, which presented a new obstacle: Curry, Thompson and Green found themselves trailing in a playoff series, 2-0, for the first time in their careers. Perhaps they needed a fresh challenge.On Sunday, Sacramento led, 58-56, at halftime, which is when Golden State — a team known for years for eviscerating teams in the third quarter — went about its usual business. Curry sank a 3-pointer. He sliced through a mix of defenders to scoop in a layup. He drained a floater.“You can tell when he’s locked in or laser-focused,” Green said.By the time Kevon Looney, the team’s starting center, scored off an offensive rebound, Golden State led by 9.The prevailing mood of the Kings fans inside the arena was not necessarily panic, but there was certainly angst. Curry had already been in this sort of situation on so many occasions, and none of it — not the hostile environment, not the pressure of a Game 7 — appeared to bother him. In fact, he was feeding off it.“This is one of the best players in the history of the game,” Kerr said, adding: “The resilience and the work that goes into that, the focus, it’s incredible to watch.As Golden State’s lead swelled in the fourth quarter, the crowd’s angst turned to resignation.Looney capped a terrific series with a double-double, 11 points and 21 rebounds.“The guy is a flat-out winner and a machine,” Kerr said.The stage, though, belonged to Curry, which was no surprise. Another one awaits against the Lakers. After Sunday’s game, Curry was asked if anyone could stop him.“Hopefully, we never find out,” he said. More
The Evolution of the Foul
The N.B.A. foul is never set in stone. As players reinvent the game, the officiating changes, too.
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When Dr. James Naismith invented basketball, he proposed 13 rules, which he published in 1892. Naismith stipulated in one rule that “no shouldering, holding, pushing, tripping, or striking in any way the person of an opponent shall be allowed.” These actions would be known as fouls.More than a century and multiple iterations of the game later, that definition has largely stayed the same. But Naismith’s foul rule is ever evolving. What constitutes a “strike” or a “push?”Fouls are fouls. Except when they aren’t. Or they’re a certain type of foul. Unless they’re not. During the 1984 N.B.A. finals, Kevin McHale of the Boston Celtics clothes-lined Kurt Rambis of the Los Angeles Lakers, sending Rambis crashing to the floor. This was, at the time, considered a common foul. No flagrant. No ejection. No suspension.The N.B.A. rule book has preserved the basic idea of a foul over time, while adding interpretations and levels — flagrants became a thing in the 1990s — and shifting what referees have emphasized as basketball has changed.Flagrant FoulsIn Game 4 of the 1984 N.B.A. finals, Kurt Rambis took a pass on a fast break and tried to go up for a layup. He never got there. Boston’s Kevin McHale stiff armed him in the neck area, leaving Rambis flat on his back. The dangerous play prompted both teams’ benches to clear. It became emblematic of the kind of physical play that was allowed in that decade.“That foul was the impetus for a lot of rule changes,” Rambis, now a special adviser to the Lakers, said in an interview.Before the 1990-91 season, the N.B.A. upped the penalties for such fouls. If a player committed an especially hard foul, it could be called flagrant. The player would not necessarily be ejected, but the injured team would shoot two free throws and get the ball back.“Hopefully, we will have fewer of these ridiculous fouls, with players not even caring whether they hurt somebody or not,” Rod Thorn, then a top official with the league, said at the time. “It’s just getting too rough.”Rambis has called McHale a “cheap shot artist” and said that he “would probably be in jail right now if I had been able to do what I wanted to do after he upended me.” But since then, he appears to have softened, telling The New York Times that he had “no animosity” or “hatred” toward McHale.“I really don’t believe that Kevin meant to do that,” Rambis said. “The result of the foul wasn’t what he intended. I mean, we just gave players hard fouls to prevent them from laying the ball up. It just was an unfortunate circumstance.”The Shooter Has Landed (The Zaza Pachulia Rule)During Game 1 of the 2017 Western Conference finals, San Antonio’s Kawhi Leonard went up for a baseline jump shot with Golden State’s starting center, Zaza Pachulia, contesting. Pachulia was so close that Leonard landed on Pachulia’s foot, rolling his ankle for the second time that game. Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich called the play “dangerous” and “unsportsmanlike.”After this, the N.B.A. introduced what is colloquially known as “The Zaza Rule,” which said that if a defender doesn’t allow a shooter to land, referees would call a flagrant foul, rather than a common foul.Pachulia was called for a common foul, and Leonard made both free throws. But Leonard didn’t play again that series and Golden State swept the Spurs en route to winning a championship.Kawhi Leonard, on the floor, missed the final three games of the 2017 Western Conference finals after landing on another player’s foot.Ray Chavez/MediaNews Group/Bay Area News via Getty ImagesIn the fall of 2020, Pachulia said on a podcast that Leonard’s injury “was a freak, bad accident unfortunately,” and that he “really felt bad.”“I’m an athlete too. My kids are playing,” Pachulia said. “I don’t want anyone to go through that.”Monty McCutchen, the senior vice president of referee training for the N.B.A., said the rule change had been in the works before that play and came in large part because players were taking more jump shots, particularly step backs. Even as players became adept at creating space for themselves, their natural shooting motion carried them forward — and they needed space to land.“That innovation of the game drove this idea that we were having people being injured,” McCutchen said. “They were landing on top of people’s feet and being out for two, three four weeks.”The N.B.A. Moves Away From Hand-CheckingScottie Pippen, left, was one of the best defenders in the N.B.A. in the 1990s. Defenders were allowed to use their hands much more than they can today.Noren Trotman/NBAE via Getty ImagesFor much of the 20th century, basketball favored the tallest players, who did most of their scoring in the paint. Defenders were allowed to hand-check — to use their hands to slow driving opponents. That put guards, who were typically the shortest players, at a disadvantage. But the 1990s Chicago Bulls, led by Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen on the perimeter, changed the calculations for the N.B.A.By 1994, Jordan and Pippen had won three championships together, but Jordan had retired and the league was looking for of a new perimeter star to fill the void. The N.B.A. instructed officials to begin calling fouls for most types of hand-checking on the perimeter, which would make it easier for guards to score.“Offensively, it will be great,” Pippen said at the time. “But on the defensive end, it’s going to take some getting used to. It’s not that I necessarily do it a lot — it’s just something that if you’ve done it for so long, it will be hard to remember not to do it.”His teammate Steve Kerr added, “I don’t know how anyone is going to guard guys like Kevin Johnson or Tim Hardaway,” referring to Johnson of the Phoenix Suns and Hardaway of the Golden State Warriors, two of the league’s best guards.The N.B.A.’s enforcement of hand-checking fouls was inconsistent. Varying levels of defensive hand use were allowed until the 2004-5 season, when the league forbade almost all restrictive contact with the offensive player.“It had gotten so prevalent in the league that you could no longer function on ball,” McCutchen said.Scoring went from 93.4 points a game in the 2003-4 season to 97.2 in 2004-5, likely the result of the greater emphasis on hand-checking and other rule changes that were part of a continuing shift toward favoring offensive players. The stricter enforcement of hand-checking fouls opened the door for players like Golden State’s Stephen Curry to later become dominant from 3-point range and in driving to the basket.The less-physical style has had its critics, such as Metta Sandiford-Artest, who for almost two decades was one of the best and most physical defenders in the N.B.A.“If you were big and strong, they were trying to take away the fact that someone could show how bigger and stronger they are,” said Sandiford-Artest, who was known as Ron Artest and Metta World Peace during his career. “So they made all the rules go against the big and strong player and they catered to the smaller and quicker player. I felt like the rules were lopsided. Because now you can hit Shaq or LeBron, but they can’t hit you back.”Not that the rule affected him: “I’m an elite defender, so it couldn’t really change how I play,” he said.The Freedom to MoveBefore the 2018-19 season, the N.B.A. expanded upon the elimination of hand-checking to emphasize “freedom of movement,” even for players without the ball. Now all players were to be allowed to cut or move freely around the court, without being impeded by an opposing player, such as through arm wraps or bumps.“The clutching and the grabbing had gotten so strong that the game of basketball, which is a game of both strength and quickness, had turned into an unbalanced metric where strength was the thing that was winning the day,” McCutchen said.When players like Curry or other top shooters, say Joe Harris of the Nets, run around screens, opposing defenders cannot hip check, bump or clutch them to slow them down. It gives the advantage to quick players, like De’Aaron Fox of the Sacramento Kings, who are difficult to chase when they dart around the court without the ball.‘The Reggie Miller Rule’Reggie Miller, a Hall of Famer who is considered one of the best shooters in N.B.A. history, was skilled at making deep jumpers and drawing fouls on them with his infamous move: the leg kick. He became known for kicking his leg out on jumpers to make it seem as if a defender had made illegal contact with him. The move worked often enough that Miller would enrage opposing defenders and coaches.Chris Webber, a fellow Hall of Famer, called him “The Human Kickstand” in a 2018 radio interview. Miller, who retired in 2005, and Webber faced off against each other in the ’90s and early 2000s, and later worked alongside each other as basketball analysts for TNT.Reggie Miller was known for his sharpshooting — and for the leg kicks that sometimes followed.Ron Hoskins/NBAE/Getty Images“When he shoots the 3, all that leg stuff that he complains about when we do games, he might’ve helped invent all that,” Webber told Dan Patrick in the 2018 interview.For years, players copied Miller’s move and got the same results.“When you first start seeing something refereeing — and the league is always a little behind it — your eye is not prone to picking up that visual syntax,” McCutchen said. “And as such, the time frame that Reggie played is when we started to see players do that as a way of trying to fool referees.”In 2012, the N.B.A. said that referees would make a point to enforce an existing rule about offensive fouls that would apply to players who appeared to purposely kick out their legs.Unnatural MovementsIn recent years, N.B.A. stars like James Harden of the Nets and Trae Young of the Atlanta Hawks had become particularly adept at drawing fouls on defenders by leaning into them, jumping sideways into them, or hooking their arms. It was creative on their part, designed to trick referees into thinking a defender had initiated contact. Other players also began flailing throughout games, trying to game officials for calls. Critics from inside and outside the league said this style of play had increasingly made the N.B.A. unwatchable and unfair.In the summer, the N.B.A. announced that plays with “unnatural movements” would result in offensive fouls or no-calls. The impact was immediate, with noticeably fewer foul calls for Harden, especially, and others from the preseason on.James Harden struggled to get foul calls early this season with tactics that had worked for him for years.Ron Schwane/Getty ImagesJordan Clarkson, a guard for the Utah Jazz, said that the change allowed defenders “to play with their hands a little bit more.” Asked if he was using his hands more as a result, Clarkson said: “Hell yeah. All the time.”Golden State forward Draymond Green, who won the Defensive Player of the Year Award in 2016-17 and is making a case for a repeat this season, said because of this latest shift, “our game is better.”“I enjoy watching N.B.A. games,” Green said after a recent practice. “I’m not looking at 144-148 in a regulation game. Those high numbers weren’t a product of great scorers, although we do have some great scorers in the league. Those high numbers were the product of a lot of people cashing 3s and a lot of people just knowing how to draw fouls.”He added, “I think we’re watching meaningful basketball now.”The Evolution of the Foul More
