By Alfredo Echenique
Dec 26, 2023, 08:46 AM EST
This Monday the Denver Nuggets beat the Golden State Warriors 120-114 at the Ball Arena in Colorado. This defeat aggravates the situation for the Bay team, which now with a 15-15 record is in tenth place in the NBA Western Conference.
During the game the Nuggets went to the foul line 23 times. Only Nikola Jokic shot 18 times during the game. This ease in which personal fouls were decided in the match did not please Warriors coach Steven Kerr at all, who expressed it with harsh criticism after the match.
“I have no problems with the referees as such. In the league we have really good referees,” Kerr said at a press conference. “I have a problem with the way we are ‘legislating’ defense by leaving it out of this sport. That’s what we’re doing in the NBA. The way we teach the referees, we are only allowing the players to invent their way to the personnel line,” explained the strategist.
“If I were a fan, I wouldn’t want to have seen the second half of the game. It was disgusting,” Kerr said about the game in which the Nuggets went to the shooting line up to 26 times due to a personal foul.
Furthermore, the coach, who is a four-time NBA championship winner, insisted that currently players simply seek to take advantage of this situation and end up forcing personal fouls.
“It was just making the referees take the bait (in the Nuggets-Warriors), but the referees have to call those fouls because that’s how they have been taught. And the players are really smart in this league. In the last decade or so, they have gotten smarter and smarter. They are taking full advantage. “It’s a parade to the free throw line and it’s disgusting to watch,” Kerr concluded.
Increase in fouls in the NBA
Over the years the NBA regulations have changed and the way of viewing fouls in the game has changed as well. In the 80s and 90s the referees were more tolerant of contact in the paint area, which is why we didn’t see as many infractions.
Nowadays the regulations have been adjusted and games with many personal fouls are becoming more and more common, due to the little margin of tolerance for the defense. Number that has increased 8% from the 2018 season to the current one.
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