So you disagree with me completely but then go to describe the actions Harden takes at the 3 point line, that aren't exactly what I described in ten words, but is what he does do a whole bunch, along with your long explanation of what he does also.
No, what you described was Harden kicking out his leg a la Reggie Miller and getting fouls. While I'm certain that there are still some fouls called on those plays occasionally, by far and large refs have stopped awarding those fouls.
What I described was different - Harden doesn't kick out his legs; rather he does things like jumping foward off stepbacks, which is unusual and unique, baiting defenders to foul him because they don't stay vertical. And those are shooting fouls, by the law, and refs should call them. What I see - what was patently obvious in this last game - is that often they don't because otherwise Harden would draw even more of them.
He did the leg flail once yesterday.
I agree (I had already said he had done it once), but just to clarify, are you claiming a foul was called?
If so, please provide the period of the game that happened/player who was called for the shooting foul/etc.
If not, then we can keep our counting on fouls wrongly given to Harden due to leg kicking at zero.
I disagree with all of that but focusing on Harden - how often have you actually seen him getting FTs on those Reggie Miller kickouts this season? We can keep a count - did he get any last game? THere was one of those plays near the end of the game but those aren't the missed calls that people are talking about. We can track it - let's see how many of those are called over this series - do you reckon so far it's been 0?
Refs haven't been calling those fouls for a while.
Most of those fouls on 3 point attempts Harden gets are of two types (let's exclude "legitimate" fouls where defenders just close out too recklessly, agressively, etc): hand fouls due to that rip-through and side-to-side shooting motions he does whenever a defender gets his hands on his space (Mark Cuban sent out a tweet yesterday saying the NBA should eliminate these fouls - not really sure it's that easy to phrase that in a rule though); and those fouls where he jumps forward and the defender gets in his landing space once his airborne - especially after his step back.
This latter type were the ones refs didn't call yesterday. Those were textbook fouls (reportedly, the refs apologized for missing them).
What makes these fouls so frequent with Harden, and also weird to see called, is that Harden jumps forward off step-backs - a very unnatural movement as players have always faded off step-backs. That's why he draws lots of those fouls - he makes a very strange movement very quickly and baits defenders into jumping forward to contest him when he's already initiated the motion to jump forward himself - and this results in a foul because defenders must give airborne shooters the space to land - they don't need to move out of their spots, but they can't get in the way of the shooters once the shooter is airborne.
What's problematic is that in most of those situations, Harden isn't really looking to make a basket. He goes through the shooting motion only to establish contact with the defender and get the foul. But they're still fouls.
People have gotten so confused about this that today I saw an ESPN analysis where the commentator applied the "verticality rule" to Harden (to the commentator's credit, he still managed to agree that Thompson had in fact commited those fouls). But the attacking player has no obligation to verticality; that only applies to defenders (otherwise, most dunks and layups wouldn't exist). Shooters can jump forward, sideways, backward, whatever - as long as the landing space is empty when they start their jump, they're entitled to it.
Anyway, this is the entire problem: Harden baits defenders into fouls in ways that are very novel, and that he executes better than anyone ever, which explains why he manages to do it so often. I find abhorrent, but I don't think refs can not calling them is the way to go.
It actually isn't a foul if Harden jumps forward and the defender jumps straight up. The non-call on Green at the end of the game was not a foul on Green, and that is pretty clearly a situation you are describing. The offensive player does not have the right to jump into the space of the defender and get a foul called on the defender.
Yeps - exactly as I wrote above: if the defender remains vertical, straight up, then it isn't a foul. But the obligation of verticality belongs to the defender, not to the shooting player (which should be obvious but yesterday I saw someone on CCN saying players must only jump vertically to shoot the ball - guess in their mind, most layups and dunks will become illegal).
No, the situation I'm describing isn't the non-call on Green. Please cite where exactly you think I described that, so that I can clarify.
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