Luka Don\u010di\u0107\u00a0is the master of the most abominable art form in the game of basketball. He worms his way into the mid-range, tricks his defender into jumping into his shot fake, jumps upwards into them, hears the ref\u2019s whistle, hangs in the air and, on the descent, drains the shot for an \u2018and-one.\u2019<\/p>\n
Performing this move consistently requires supreme skill, timing and utter basketball mastery. If the move is performed correctly, it is totally legal. But like any magic trick, the more you\u2019ve seen it, the more annoying it becomes. A 2026 Lakers game is an experience defined by these sorts of moves, which are known colloquially as \u2018foul baiting.\u2019\u00a0While Luka foul-baited in\u00a0Dallas, he has become increasingly reliant on it as a result of the Lakers\u2019 lack of a competent lob threat and subpar shooting, a problem for a heliocentric Don\u010di\u0107. Despite this, Don\u010di\u0107 creates the illusion of a sinking ship sailing smoothly, and the foul-baiting and manipulation are the price of the teams\u2019 floatation in the playoff pack.<\/p>\n
Some things that are deeply unpleasant to watch are horribly effective.<\/p>\n
But Don\u010di\u0107\u2019s free throw manufacturing is part of a larger phenomenon, a debate which revolves around the allegation that he, and teams like the Oklahoma City Thunder, aren\u2019t \u2018playing the right way.\u2019 After beating the Thunder in December, Victor Wembanyama referred to the San Antonio Spurs as playing \u201cpure and ethical basketball,\u201d\u00a0poking at the style of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Mark Daigenault. The Thunder\u2019s playstyle is defined by consistent, unofficiated, swarming defense (which paralyzes referees by the volume of physicality), complemented by Shai\u2019s foul-baiting on offense, for which people call him a \u2018free throw merchant.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
The defensive manipulation of referees is different from Don\u010di\u0107\u2019s little game, but they both rest in principle upon the impossibility of correctly officiating basketball games. Now, I am as sick of Don\u010di\u0107\u2019s mid-range cat-and-mouse, and of the pack of hyenas that are Alex Caruso, Jalen Williams, Luguentz Dort and Cason Wallace, as everybody else is. But it is not the players\u2019\u00a0fault that the rules and referees are more flexible than we want to admit. Now it remains true that\u00a0rules should be tinkered with, especially with regard to offensive fouls. But no rule change can bear the weight of a team aggressively wielding more all-NBA caliber defenders than Michael Jordan has rings.<\/p>\n
What I am getting at is that it is misguided to compulsively judge players and teams by some Naismithean criteria of \u2018rightness\u2019 because the thing that makes basketball \u2014 or anything \u2014 innovative is not abiding strictly by the written rules \u2014 it is finding holes in them. The stretching of rules, the pushing against the boundaries of imperfect laws, is the defining characteristic of basketball\u2019s historical progression.<\/p>\n
When players foul-bait, and when coaches overwhelm referees with physicality, an old truth is revealed: every rule lies upon a margin of ambiguous space in which lie the possibilities for creativity, freedom and innovation. It is equally true that watching somebody find that space for themselves can be unpleasant to watch, and this has been our collective reaction to these phenomena. But through them I have come to terms that in these experiments, foul-baiting and experimental defensive principles, we are watching the birth of the future of the game \u2014 or at least rule changes which might define it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Luka Don\u010di\u0107\u00a0is the master of the most abominable art form in the game of basketball. He worms his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138119,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-425327","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425327","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=425327"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/425327\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138119"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=425327"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=425327"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=425327"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}