[Nomad]

Originally Posted by Spacemanspif

If you watch another angle, McDaniels accidentally kicked Shai’s foot when he was losing his balance. It may not seem like much or on purpose but it’s still a foul.

Most of the comments and discourse around the Shai fouls are so disingenuous or flat out wrong it’s generally not worth commenting back, but I’ll give my take before I go back into hybernation.

So, Shai does look for fouls. It’s not a secret or anything, but it’s also generally in the flow of the game on basketball plays so I don’t have a huge problem with it. He’s almost always working his way to the basket, so if he beats his man enough to put them at a disadvantage, why not also draw contact while they’re not in legal guarding position and get an and-1? All the comments about him being as bad or worse than Harden are completely off base, especially when it’s the same people who were rooting for Denver in the last round while Jokic was jumping on top of guys 30 feet from the basket looking for fouls that had nothing to do with the flow of the game.

I saw a stat from KOC that Shai drew 13 fouls on 28 drives, and Ant drew 7 fouls on 7 drives. But somehow due to the final volume numbers, Shai is a foul merchant while all these guys who avoid contact and chuck 3s are not? It’s ridiculous. It’s honestly sad that due to social media algorithms and cherry picked 5 second clips, so many people will have their opinions formed and feel compelled to spread negativity and misinformation. At the end of the day though everyone will get their comments in and a year from now they won’t remember and be on to the next thing

This is a conversation I really want to get into. Right now.