NBA Rules, Reffing and Enforcement

[InstaFace]

Holiday had a play last night where Randle was backing him down, gave Holiday a good bump in the chest, and Holiday went down. Holiday did not get the charge call but they didn't call a flop either (correctly because there was real contact, just not enough for the charge apparently). I think they are targeting the true phantom exaggerations.

If the shoulder drive into a defender is hard enough for the defender to literally be knocked on his ass, that absolutely needs to be an offensive foul (assuming the defender had the position). And if it wasn't hard enough for the defender to go down, and he went down anyway, it should be called for embellishment/flop. But a legit shoulder drive to put the guy down? Uh....yeah, 100% should be a foul.

We badly need a thread for this stuff (...and let me move my reply to make one!), because this is one of those massive gray areas in how I understand where the line is drawn between allowable contact and the balance between "being stronger than your opponent and muscling them around" and "excessive or prohibited contact, so a foul".

Shaq of course made a career out of plays like these.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QT8w8Ot8Pcw


View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DE8248HyAbw


You bump into the guy, knock him off his position, then use his moment of imbalance to move left or right around him and get to the basket. You're only ever called for a charge if you're running from a few steps away and get a head of steam. If you're hitting them with your (likely prodigious) ass, or back, you can basically hit as hard as you want, from what I can tell.

View: https://youtu.be/DJ0kOypvrDQ?t=207


In these examples the defender is just giving ground rather than trying to hold his position. In the NBA I've often seen smaller guys try to do the same - like Jrue to Randle or Robinson on Wednesday - and they just get knocked off by the guy's back or butt, no call. It happens so often and so consistently without a call that I assume it's legal or within some officiating guidelines. But I'm no basketball coach. Is this just a rule "more honored in the breach than the observance", like carries?

I'm going to leave aside all the arguing over flopping for now, but I hope that discussion will get moved here so it can continue without being a tangent on discussion of the team. Either way, though, there is clearly something I don't understand about big guys bumping and bopping their way to get closer to the basket.