Chris Paul, the NBA and the Flop Factor
Chris Paul is overrated.
Last night the New Orleans Hornets point guard became the first player in NBA history to start his career with at least 30 points, 10 assists, and three steals in a game. Beautiful.
Paul is playing against an ancient point guard in Jason Kidd, an old team in Dallas, and with rules that, if followed, would stop him, but at the same time allow him to free-wheel around the court uninhibited.
Yesterday afternoon I watched a film about some NBA players in the 1950s on NBA TV. There was Bob Cousy doing everything Steve Nash or Chris Paul does today. But what I noticed is that Cousy had huge hands because he didn’t palm the ball on his cross-over dribble or his hesitation move. But Paul? If you stopped him mid-move, you’d find that he was holding the ball like he was checking a small watermelon in the supermarket, hand almost completely under the ball, defender frozen like a box of peas.
So, bad grocery store analogies aside, Paul, with his quickness, creates for himself a huge advantage over slower players because referees refuse to blow the whistle on one of the few calls that is cut-and-dried and easily determined.
Watching Paul chew up Dallas last night that move was worth 12 points and three assists. That drops Paul to a 20-point, 14 assist night.
Next, is Paul’s penchant for traveling. Paul must have a carry-all somewhere under his chair on the bench. It is a wonder he is able to play at all as much as he travels; jet lag is a m$%&@er f*%&er on the human body. But Paul travels through the lane like a frequent flyer. With five travels - or walking, for the slower-moving set - Paul loses two more assists and three more baskets. That lowers his stats to 14 and 12. That’s a great night for a young player in the ‘offs, but hardly monumental.
Heck, with a 14 and 12 night the Hornets still blow out the Mavs. But Paul isn’t the Bayou wunder kindt he’s made out to be.
But wait, there’s more.
There is the no-touch factor in play with Paul, as well. While Paul’s peer Dwight Howard earned his 29-point, 22 rebound night. He was banged constantly, smaller players climbed his back with alarming regularity, and opposing big men tugged at his uniform and grabbed various body parts as he jetted by them in the lane for rebounds regular occurrences.
However, while Howard plays a man’s game on the inside, Paul plays the touchy point guard game. One out of three forays into the lane must be accompanied by a fall to the floor, touched or not. The slightest bump or touch is accentuated with flailing arms, a head snap, and a painful to the ears yelp.
And the referees fall for this B-Movie acting nearly every time.
Thespian lessons learned at the “Divac School of Emoting” earned Paul 14 free throws, of which he converted 12. Easily seven of those makes were the direct result of phantom calls not made by high school referees, but somehow called by the “best basketball officials on the planet.” That drops his total to seven points and 12 assists.
That makes Chris Paul a pass-first point guard with a need to broaden his game on the offensive end of the floor. It also makes last night’s game closer.
But Chris Paul is still light years quicker than is Jason Kidd at this point in their careers; he is still a more complete point guard than is Kidd because he can shoot jumpers. And if the game was officiated differently, Paul probably would have adjusted and scored in other ways and made up 10 of those points lost by decent officiating. Paul is a tremendously skilled young point guard whose - scarily, for the rest of the NBA - best years are ahead of him.
Yet, because of lax officiating and rules that make playing defense so much of a chore that there is no equalizer for a player like Paul - or Nash, or any point ultra-quick offensive player - Paul and his peers in quickness end up with inflated statistics. And we end up with inflated perceptions of their abilities.
If only Magic, Isiah, KJ, DJ, and a host of other point guards from the 1980s and early-to-mid 1990s could have played then with today rules…
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Speaking of flopping
This morning on ESPN’s Mike and Mike in the Morning radio-television simulcast, Mike Greenberg and Mike Golic interviewed Stu Jackson, NBA VP of Basketball Operations and “Dean of Discipline.” The co-hosts queried Jackson about players’ penchant for flopping and used the play between Andrei Kirilenko and Louis Scola as the prime example of this questionable tactic. Jackson said of the play:
“Last night there was a foul on the play.”
No Stu. First off, the game was night before last but most importantly, Scola stuck out his arm before Andrei Kirilenko reached his hand, not after. Kirilenko grabbed Scola’s arm flung it out of the way and propelled himself into the floor cameramen. Tony Brothers, the referee standing five feet or so from the play and in perfect position to see it develop, blew the call - period. There is no other way to interpret the event.
But Greenberg and Golic continued to press Jackson on the issue of flopping and asked if the league planned to legislate players attempting to gain an unfair advantage through the flop. To this Jackson said:
“There haven’t been that many game-changing fouls.”
Jackson is clearly on drugs. Or he thinks he is a master of obfuscation and double-speak, where, if you parse his statement, he could be telling the truth if you count last-second flops altering the outcome of a game.
But.
This is not Congress nor is it intelligence agency talk. This is the NBA and Stu Jackson is an NBA guy and not so well-versed in verbal flopping
A game-changing call can occur in the first few minutes of a game, long, long before 47 minutes and 26 seconds have elapsed, or however much time must elapse in a game for Jackson declares a flop as “game-changing.”
Because flopping is such a regular occurrence in the NBA game officials should be able to discern between a flop and real contact by now. That they do not seem to be able to do so is probably more related to the fact that there is an official in the stands grading their performance as the game goes and presenting them with a score in the locker room minutes after the game ends. That score goes a long way to whether or not an official works in and through the playoffs. This results in referees erring constantly on the side of safety instead of making the tough calls, or in this case, the tough non-call.
But all-in-all, if the game officials decided to all eschew whatever is being lorded over them and not reward the flop, there is a good chance that the league’s perception of this tactic.
Tags: Andrei Kirilenko, Bob Cousy, Chris Paul, Dallas Mavericks, Dwight Howard, flopping, Jason Kidd, Luis Skola, NBA, New Orleans Hornets, Steve Nash, Stu Jackson
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[…] “Chris Paul, the NBA, and the Flop Factor” article attracted scads of attention around the Internet… […]
Pingback by Image Gallery | National Sports Review on April 24, 2008
He should’ve won MVP … but there is no excuse for this:
http://i32.tinypic.com/ekhope.jpg
Comment by jaysscholar on May 10, 2008