real quick I've got a quiz for y'all won't take long just three questions okay first question is this a foul now with Z Collins on Joel uput it and the foul if you answered no you would be correct good job okay it's going to get a bit harder now is this a foul the corner the ball fake that he's so good at no another offensive rebound from embiid and Offman blocked him I lied it didn't get any harder because if you said no you again are correct now last question and this will stump even the
biggest Hoops fans is this a foul Simon Ty Maxi over to Joel embiid who already Dro and you got it right because of course you did because this is obviously not a foul at least not to anyone who's played or watched or even been around basketball at any capacity in their life and yet Joel embiid continues to Feast off of these Phantom calls night after night how is he doing this has he performed witchcraft on these refs does embiid have dirt on Adam Silver how is this a foul is Joel embiid cheating the game or
is he just using the rules to his Advantage like countless other players before [Applause] him for your viewing [Applause] [Music] pleasure today's video is sponsored by Factor 75 factor is a g for a meal kit service that makes hitting your nutritional goals easier than ever before by delivering fresh never Frozen dietitian approved meals right to your doorstep skip the grocery trips the meal prepping the cleanup the hassle with factors pre-prepared meals that are ready to eat in Just 2 minutes Factor sweats the small stuff so you don't have to their registered dietitians work hand inand
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get 50% off your first Factor box and free wellness shots for life that's two free wellness shots from three available flavors for every every order while you are an active subscriber sign up now at factor75.com do y'all remember back in the early 2000s when Shaquille O'Neal was so dominant that teams would just hack him on purpose to try to stop him I mean the strategy was genius throughout his prime Shaq shot 76% from the field within 3T of the hoop sent him to the line where he shot an abysmal 52% and you've essentially found yourself
an in-game cheat code every time a team fouled Shack while he was deep in the paint they saved themselves about a half a point foul him enough and this half Point Advantage starts to add up very quickly and so this is exactly what teams did from 2000 through 2002 the three-year peak of Shaq's NBA career he attempted 11.4 free throws a game leading the league in free throw attempts every season by a wide margin over the past three seasons Joel embiid has averaged 11.8 free throw attempts per game let me say that again Shaquille O'Neal
lived in the paint and was getting sent to the line on purpose so much that the act of fouling him literally has its own name and Joelle embiid somehow shoots more free throws than he did ladies and gentlemen this shouldn't be possible and yet it is throughout the last 45 years of modern NBA history embiid has more career free throw attempts per game than any other player with now over 10 free throw attempts per game the first player to climb over double digits since Will Chamberlain did it in the 60s James Harden spent half a
decade as the best scorer in the league and was almost disregarded throughout those four years because of his foul baiting and Rule bending and even he is all the way down here but embiid's knacked for drawing fouls goes even further because here are the most frequent free throw shooters in NBA history based on free throw attempts per 36 minutes here's LeBron here's Jordan here's James Harden and way up here is Shaquille O'Neal and here's Joel embiid this is outrageous the foul Merchant label embiid has earned himself over the last few years as harsh as it
is may just be the reality of his game this season embiid has been on a tear averaging the second most points per game in a season in modern NBA history and being well on his way to winning back-to-back MVPs it's been a historic season for the big man so far his team is winning he's putting up big numbers and hisor performances we should be celebrating embiid right now but we're not the NBA Community has collectively turned its back on Joelle and rebuked his achievements this season because the man is cheating well not really but kind
of he isn't breaking any rules or anything he's just breaking the sort of Unwritten code laid in place for NBA players around the league the Antics the gimmicks the way he's drawing fouls and flopping all over the courts has become so egregious that even 30 six points a night has not spared him from criticism last week embiid had a monster performance against the Spurs where he dropped 70 points and 18 rebounds on 68% true shooting according to the NBA's game score metric embiid's game ranks as the fourth best single game performance in modern NBA history
but instead of cheers and amazement fans were left unimpressed even repulsed by the clinic embiid put on all of this criticism stemming from from one major issue people have with embiid's game right now free throws free throws and more free throws 70 points is mindboggling but if 30% of those points come from the line and how you got to the line was suspect in the first place does this performance still have any Merit or is it just one big display of how a player has mastered the loopholes and gimmicks of the game we love well
it's probably a little bit of both we know teams foul Giannis a lot to slow him down we know Kobe Bryant was a master at baiting players into fouls and we just discussed how Shaq got to the line so much because teams wanted him there embiid on the other hand is probably closer to a prime James Harden in this sense than he is to a traditional dominant big for years NBA fans couldn't stand the way James Harden played the game his point totals were seen as just a symptom of the way he would bend the
rules to his favor and manipulate the games to boost his numbers and he might have actually been able to beat these allegations if his Antics actually worked in the playoffs but they never quite did embiid at least at this moment is Cut From the Same Cloth crazy numbers historic nights while stacking up scoring titles off of seemingly pure tricks and schemes at least this is the general perception right now but is this the reality of embiid's game or are we just a bit too skeptical of his dominance here's a game where Shaquille O'Neal scored his
career high 61 points during the 1999 2000 NBA season season by this point the hacka shack was in full effect teams were fouling the man just to stop him from scoring in the post but look at some of these foul calls throughout this game this doesn't appear to be a foul and yet it was called as one this was also called a foul and so was this here's a shooting foul where the defense hardly even made contact and here's another one that really didn't need to be called throughout this game Shaq got to the line
12 times these Phantom calls made up six of those trips and eight extra points on the board for the big man here's a game from Michael Jordan's 1989 1990 season the game where he scored a career high 69 points and by this point he was the NBA's Premier Superstar and so he got Superstar calls like this one from long with a rebound and this one Jord gets El air and this one too in fact during this away game Cavaliers fans were losing it over the disparity in calls and favoritism the refs showing Michael into the
seven footer Purdue H Cleveland wanted to get a foul against Jordan it didn't come two with another rebound now watch Michael get to the line here they're going to really get mad he got into the paint gets the two and for good measure here's another one the existence of superstars getting treated different than other players is not new to the NBA and I show you all of this to say that not only is Joel embiid not the first player to use the rules to his Advantage but he's also not the first player to receive favorable
Superstar treatment a few years ago Peter Lee a data analyst and NBA fan wrote a great piece about the idea of Superstar calls and the validity of their existence within his research Peter collected all of the last 2-minute data from the NBA dating from 2015 to 2019 and put each type of foul within these reports into different categories incorrect calls or calls made when there wasn't actually a foul and incorrect no calls which is when a player got fouled but no call was made he then gave an advantage rate and a disadvantage rate by comparing
the rates at which players received correct calls or incorrect calls and if the call was in their favor or not he then categorized every player in the league based on Merit into three tiers Superstars stars and non-stars now what makes this research next level is that last 2-minute data is the most objective method to review officiating in the NBA since its introduction in 2015 last 2-minute data documents every call made within the last 2 minutes of every game that is within three points all of these calls are then reviewed and reported by a league operations
team to determine the accuracy of each and every call as Peter mentions in his article they provide transparency to referee performance and the closest thing that we have to objective truth when it comes to the accuracy of a call or no call and within his data Peter tracked over 38,000 of these calls from nearly 2,000 games from 2015 to 2019 and after reviewing this data he concluded that Superstars are over 20% more likely to be advantaged on offensive calls compared to even stars of the league in other words Superstars are more likely to get a
foul call where there wasn't a foul 20% more often than anyone else overall the referees tend to swallow their whistle make incorrect no calls at a relatively even rate across all player groups but are more likely to give lenient foul calls to superstars on offense Superstars receive preferential treatment on both offense and defense compared to stars and non-stars they are most likely to receive incorrect foul calls on offense and commit incorrect no calls on defense which proves the existence of Superstar calls even in the last 2 minutes of close games it's a fantastic article and
I've left a link in the description if anyone wants to check it out and all of this data just confirms what we already knew Superstars get calls so then why is Joel embiid getting criticized for being on the receiving end of this Star Treatment when countless players before him did the same thing Joelle embiid is the reigning MVP and scoring champion of course he's going to get some favorable calls going his way but just like referees give preferential treatment to Superstars fans give preferential treatment to certain players as well specifically players who have proven that
their tactics and Antics actually work when it matters 36 points per game is no fluke but when your production and efficiency plummet by nearly 25% in the postseason and your superpowers wear off when your team needs you most all of a sudden that 36 a night feels a bit fraudulent I feel like at this point in his career embiid's reputation precedes him and right now even above his incredible scoring abilities his reputation is a choke artist the man is a legit Mega star but it is still difficult to just look past his playoff blunders you
want to know if a player's play style is actually effective if it's more than just a quick gimmick if it works in the playoffs and as great as he's been in the regular season it's hard to look at embiid's performances this year without the lens of skepticism because of his playoff lows right now he exists within the same vein as players like Alan Ivers and James Harden MVP caliber players scoring fiends and offensive juggernauts who continued to fall flat when it mattered most is Joelle embiid cheating the game of basketball no embiid is far from
the first player to boost his game with Brazen schemes and Rule bending methods he's not the first player to benefit from Superstar treatment and he's also not the first player to receive criticism for it hope you all enjoyed and as always until next time
