Colin Cowherd (44:43)
This is. It's like talking out of both sides of your mouth when you say, he's an amazing, amazing player. James Harden's an amazing player. An amazing player. And in many ways, James Harden's a better player in his prime than Shea Gilgis Alexander is because Harden had some of the same foul Drawing abilities only he was an elite passer. And Chase, he's a good passer. There's nothing, nothing's truly special about him as a passer. Nothing truly special about as a three point shooter. He's unbelievable. Mid range and six feet in. He, it seems like he never misses and then he has the ability to draw fouls. He's the best of these free throw merchants but, but if you just throw out raw stats and you go hey mj, I mean again the difference would be Michael Jordan was driving into a lane where there were two guys and, and yeah sometimes there were phantom calls no question but what he wasn't doing was he wasn't locking up somebody else's arm arm driving to the basket and then all of a sudden releasing the arm and flailing back and falling down at the second of releasing the basketball in order to gain a foul. Like that's just. He didn't do it. So I get what the stats look like but you can't, you can't fool the hardcore basketball fan. And as, as likable, hell as lovable as he is, right. Like dude gets up there and I don't know it is about oklahom guys but when they win the MVP they always just say the right thing. Go back to Russell, Russell Westbrook was the, the you know, the basketball is my only friend type deal. But, but Kevin Rant talked about his mom being the real MVP and Shay Gild Alexander talked about his wife. It was beautiful. Like this is not an indictment on him the person, it's not really indictment on him the player. It's an indictment on where we've gotten to in an effort to make the game more offense friendly. The offense gets to dictate contact and all these other things and now we've gotten to the place where the offense will intentionally make not just contact but grab the defender in an effort to act like they're being grabbed. And yeah, I don't know how much you guys watched last night but there was a, a point in the game where you know, one of the Timbers players just pushed him and then when they're john back and forth in the lane he's like hey, stop flopping bro, stop flopping. You know and look the story to Oklahoma City is they're playing more of a college style defense, right? Really, really pressuring the basketball. And that's the other thing, right? So we're not allowed to get anywhere near Shea Gil just Alexander, we put our hands anywhere near him, he grabs them and acts like which you're allowed to do. I. We teach our guys to do that. Hey, somebody puts their hand on you, it's your hand. But. But you go from that to the other end, where Oklahoma City is playing super physical on the ball defensively, and then what's called a loaded up defense. Just feet and hands and bodies as much in the paint. So you're playing one on five or at least one on two more than one on one. There's just no spacing there like it is against other teams. It's a better coach defensive team that is daring you to make skip passes and skip passes into drives or skip passes into jump shots. And the Timberwolves aren't doing it. But the juxtaposition of how the game is officiated at each end and again, a lot of it is style. You know, Oklahoma City, they do what Rick Patino's teams have famously done, which is they foul on every play with the idea that you can't call them a whole ball. It's an unwatchable game if you call a foul on every possession. So if you have greater depth than everybody else, you get up in them. One, once you establish contact, they don't usually call contact fouls. Two, you know, if you do get into foul trouble, you got the numbers to withstand a little foul trouble. And three, there's the, you know, it's not just style, it's. They're playing at home and the place is getting crazy, but they're also playing hellboring to defense. So even if you go by the guy that has his hands on you, they're forced you to make that next pass. But it's, it's really interesting that you're watching Shea and how he plays and, you know, I was at game seven. I shared this on my show. It's Doug Alibin for Colin this the Hurt fox board Trudio iHeartradio app. I went to game seven between the Nuggets and the Thunder, and I wasn't. The crowd is incredible, right? It's like, it really is like a college crowd. People ask, what was it so cool about playing at Oklahoma State when you were there? It's. That's what the crowd was like every night. Unbelievable. But I'm. I'm standing in front of some guy who behind me, every time Jokic draws the foul, he's like, free throw merchant. You're like, well, I, I get it. Jokic does draw fouls and does throw his hands into people and do all kind of the classic ways to draw fouls. But you do know that Shea is like, if. If there's different rankings or different chess pieces. If Jokic is the king, then he's the queen. If Jokic is the queen, then he's the king of free throw merchantry. And I don't know if. If there's a cottage industry, a free throw merchant trait, or if you need a bachelor's or master's degree, but he's got a doctorate, but it makes it really, really hard. And it's also one of those things where the difference between now and the Jordan era is HTTV4K and how good the replays are, where you're sitting there going, like, yeah, I don't think he was actually touched. And yet he fell down. You know, look, if the Thunder win the title, it probably doesn't matter, but this does feel like. Do you guys remember when Dwyane Wade and the Dallas Mavericks beat the. Excuse me, Dwayne Wade in the. The Miami Heat beat the Dallas Mavericks in the NBA Finals, and it was just a constant march to the free throw line where it almost felt predetermined that the NBA wanted to make Dwayne Wade a star. I don't think that's what happened. I think, again, it's just adjusting, adjusting the rules. And you're sitting there going, hey, the offensive player has all the benefits of these rules. So much. So now that Shea is actually creating the contact, grabbing the other player, locking up his arm, and then making it out as if that arm is grabbing him. This is. You know, yesterday we talked about the tush push still being allowed. You know, they've gotten away from guys just throwing back their head, and now Shea has taken it to another level where he kind of falls to the side, and it's constantly making faces and noises, even when he's not getting touched. I do wonder what adjustment they can make in terms of stylistically a rules wise or emphasis wise and officiating the future. It is that widely discussed, and I think it's because he's the best at it. He's the MVP. It's obvious what he's doing. Hey, coming up next, LeBron's agents talk about him moving. Is there any chance he changes teams? We'll discuss next in the herd.
