Are there other people out there that found it annoying when Mark Jackson, Mike Breen, and Jeff Van Gundy last night while calling the Lakers-Nuggets Game 4, were calling for Dahntay Jones‘ head on a platter over his ‘dirty trip’ of Kobe Bryant? Are fouls no longer part of the game?
Put yourself in Dahntay Jones shoes for just one second. You are tasked by your team to do one, and only one thing on the floor, and that is stop the best offensive player in the entire league from scoring. The coaches, trainers, and your teammates are telling you for hours before the game to “be physical with him”, “stay in front of him”, “don’t give him any easy baskets to get going”, “make him work for it”, “do whatever it takes”, etc. etc. And on one particular play you are working your tail off and he gets past you, since he isn’t within arms reach you instantly react and stick out your foot. Bryant trips and falls down.
Did you foul him? Absolutely!
Should the referees have called it? Absolutely!
Was it anything ‘dirty’ or cause for fines or suspension? Not even close.
If you’ve played basketball at virtually any level of competitiveness you are well aware that to play the kind of gritty, hard-nosed defense required to stop the opposition’s top offensive scorer, you are going to commit fouls from time to time. It happens, it’s just part of the game. Defensive fouls are as much a part of the game as free throws, field goals, passing, or dribbling.
Sometimes when you are playing really tight defense, doing everything you can physically and mentally to stay in front of your man he is going to beat you. And every single basketball player out there knows that from time to time your instant sub-conscious reaction is to just foul him, by grabbing, pulling, tugging, pushing, and sometimes even ‘tripping’. Yes, I said the dirty word, “tripping”.
Sure Kobe Bryant fell down hard on the trip, but he got up unharmed without any injury, cuts, or bruises. Most players fall much harder than that on a standard play taking the ball to the bucket where it is quite acceptable to give a guy a “hard foul” and send him flying into the first row of people where much more physical damage can occur.
My message to Dahntay Jones is this, ‘next time just work on moving your feet so you don’t have that impulse to stick out your foot to stop Bryant. But in the meantime ignore the haters, because the Nuggets are playing great defense right now.’
