The danger around the Portland star is that in making crucial debates into arguments about basketball, we lose sight of what is really important<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a weird, psychological tension around basketball fouls. Not unlike a trial. A single rubbered heartbeat thumps in our collective throats. In basketball litigation, the verdict is televised and delivered in public by the referee\u2019s whistle. Deni Avdija faced more trials than a career criminal in early January, when he scored 41 points in the Portland Trail Blazers\u2019 win over the Houston Rockets. Twenty-eight came from the field. The other 13 were handed to him at the stripe.<\/p>\n
The online response was immediate, echoing the criticism that has followed the Israeli all season: he\u2019s a free-throw merchant. It\u2019s a specific kind of hoops pejorative \u2013 not quite cheating, but a kind of outsourcing, farming points out to the refs. After the game, Rockets forward Tari Eason was asked what makes Avdija so difficult to guard. His answer was one word: \u201cZebras.\u201d<\/p>\n
Continue reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The danger around the Portland star is that in making crucial debates into arguments about basketball, we lose sight of what is really important There\u2019s a weird, psychological tension around basketball fouls. Not unlike a trial. A single rubbered heartbeat thumps in our collective throats. In basketball litigation, the verdict is televised and delivered in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66239\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news2shorts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}