The One Rule To Save The NBA.

The NBA is in the golden era of skill, athleticism and creativity. It's also in the golden era of another highly valued tactic used by players... Foul grifting.

Full Disclosure:

Before I discuss this topic further, I want to be fully transparent: I used to teach players how to grift, and I’m not ashamed of it one bit.

The NBA is one of the most competitive environments in the world, and you win in this league on the margins. All players must abide by the same rules, but the more creatively a player can interpret those rules and push them to their limit, the more they will find an edge against their competition.

Necessity is the mother of innovation.

Au Revoir Paris:

The discourse surrounding the 24/25 NBA season has included much discussion of how long games actually take and multiple takes on wanting the NBA to be more like FIBA.

Mainly because the 2024 Olympic Tournament in Paris delivered a compelling, competitive, and beautiful basketball product.

It gave fans a snapshot of what the best players in the world looked like when they were forced to play basketball instead of putting together audition tapes for Wipe Out.

FIBA referees showed the world that they do the one thing NBA officials refuse to do:

They do not acquiesce to foul-grifting from the top players.

Players in the NBA will always seek competitive advantages wherever they can; that’s the nature of the beast. The NBA needs a deterrent, something to level the playing field. One rule change will improve the aesthetics and length of games while bringing back ethical hoops, which viewers are clamoring for.

The Rule:

“Grifting Plenty”

Any obvious foul-grifting action will result in a foul on the grifting player. Then, the opposing team will be awarded one free throw¹, and the ball.

This rule is not mild; it’s spicy. But drastic times call for drastic measures.

This is a perfect example of a play that would be considered a foul-grifting penalty.

The offensive player (SGA) checks to see where the defender is and then makes a clear “non-basketball” play by jumping back into the defender's path. The offensive player makes more of an attempt to trick the referee into calling a foul than making the shot.

Here is another example of a play that would be considered a foul-grifting penalty.

This is not a basketball play. SGA is attempting to jump forward into the defender's space; his primary focus here is to trick the referee into calling a foul rather than making the shot. After the shot, the OKC TV announcer commented, “He was going for the foul.”

(You might be saying this is such a subjective rule; it is, so is almost every other rule in basketball.)

Cash Rules Everything:

During All-Star weekend, the consensus was that the players make so much money that the league will never get them to care about a game in which each player on the winning team receives only $125,000.

The risk of an All-Star player getting hurt during the game isn’t as significant as the reward for winning. Everything in basketball is a risk vs. reward calculation, whether it’s playing hard in the All-Star game or attempting to foul grift.

The fine for flopping is $2,000, and it’s not even enforced. The fines for flopping during the 23/24 season totaled $52,000 for the entire league! You can see the complete list here.²

The total for the 24/25 season is a whopping $6,000. The complete list is here.

Last week, when talking to folks around the league about the issue of foul-grifting, one Eastern Conference Executive mentioned that the $2,000 flopping fine is nothing to these guys; it’s a Wednesday bottle of Cab (Cabernet Sauvignon).

Fines and warnings at these levels aren’t cutting it, not in the slightest; this is a competition issue.

A properly executed Foul Grift results in free throws, the highest PPP action in basketball, and fouls on the other team’s best defenders. The payoff for the gifting player is way too big for a silly warning or empty threat of a $2,000 fine to interfere with their grifting mission.

Newton’s third law of physics states, “for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” It’s time for the league to establish an equal and opposite response to the foul-grifting epidemic because, at this moment, the pendulum has swung too far in favor of the grifters.

Splitting The Baby:

Over the past week, I’ve watched way too many of the best players in the world being fouled repeatedly. I estimate that I’ve seen about 2,000 fouls committed³.

I’ve come away with two conclusions:

1. The best players in the world are creating more advantages than other players. They are the best because they combine size, athleticism, and skill in a way few others can—not because they’re the best at drawing free throws.

2. The best players do not need the extra help of giving them foul calls when they have not created advantages and do not attempt to make basketball plays.

The NBA and its officials' most significant problem is that they’re trying to split the baby⁴. They refuse to take a genuine stand on foul grifting. Instead, they’re choosing the route of half measures.

When officiating these grifting actions, they are fouls for some players but not others. They are shooting fouls sometimes and side-out other times. They are play-on situations for some and fouls other times.

One of these grifting actions could happen precisely the same way four games in a row and be called differently each time. Either these players are interpreting the rules correctly, pushing them to the absolute limits, and creating advantages on the margins, or they’re making non-basketball plays, and the structure needs to be reinforced.

Here are four plays where every offensive player feels the defender’s arm across their chest. They all attempt to rip the ball upwards into a shooting motion.

1. The officials look at Wendell Carter Jr. as a silly goose for even considering this a basketball play. Turnover.

2. SGA gets the foul call but is not awarded a shooting foul.

3. Joel Embiid gets the foul call but is not awarded a shooting foul.

4. SGA is awarded a shooting foul.

These four plays are almost identical before the whistle but have different outcomes. Consistency is key, but there currently is none.

If you present these plays/questions to even the most argumentative people, they’ll quickly cite the mystical “gather” as to why each was officiated correctly.

So, let me present Mr. Trae Young for those types of people.

Not a single one of these Trae Young fouls were awarded free throws.

The contact is made because Young makes a quick stop to get into a shooting motion. Did he jump into the Indiana players here, maybe? Is this an unnatural basketball play? Maybe. But these are the current rules; this is a legal play from Young, and he’s gathered to get into a shot, so why are there no free throws?

These fouls are called non-shooting fouls. That makes zero rational sense, considering the foul is only called because Young made an unnatural shooting motion to create the contact.

But this Trae Young Foul results in free throws; what’s different? If it takes something that you need a six-minute review with multiple 8K camera angles and 25x zoom lens features, then we’ve lost the thread on what makes this game amazing.

NBA players are some of the world's most creative and competitive people. If you give them a structure to play in by using well-defined rules, they will find a way to push the limits and create a competitive advantage. If you change the structure by changing the rules to something different, they’ll do the same thing again. Players will adjust.

The league has to pick a side and stop trying to split the baby.

The torpedo is another non-shooting foul that is only called because the player makes an unnatural shooting motion.

The torpedo is precisely what it sounds like. It’s when a player launches into the defender and throws their arms up as if that’s how they shoot a shot⁵. The offensive player will almost always put themselves off balance, out of rhythm, and totally out of control, all for the chance at earning a trip to the free-throw line.

Few players have the type of heat-seeking precision as Joel Embiid and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. Some torpedo actions will be called shooting fouls, some non-shooting fouls; no one knows which will be the case.

This edit has a few shooting fouls, but most are waived off and deemed non-shooting. How is that possible? The mystical “gather” is an ideal way to justify an official's call⁶.

If Adam Silver and the league office are looking for more of that FIBA/Olympic magic, look no further than foul-grifting. They must set the standard and determine what will and will not be tolerated.

Seeing the players play the game and find solutions to a defensive problem is one of the best parts of basketball. Still, too often now, the best players see the most efficient solution as throwing their body into a defender or simply falling. If you can trick an official, the payoff is massive, and there are zero real consequences. After all, it’s easier to make a shot from 15 feet away with no one guarding you than anything else.

Between the grifting and reviews, the game has become a constant stop-and-start debate about the rule book.

Consumers and employees both throw their hands up due to the lack of consistency.

The NBA has a video rule book that shows an example of an Offensive Foul, where a shooter launches into a defender at an abnormal angle. If you didn’t know any better, you would think this play could serve as a teaching example. Here is the link.

One of the classic flavors of grifting is The Fall; it’s not a complicated move, but it takes years of dedication to the craft of grifting to pull it off.

Players will fall when given the opportunity. This sounds pretty wild, but it highlights one of the keys to being a good foul grifter in the NBA: You have to be willing to make things so uncomfortable and awkward for everyone that it forces officials to blow the whistle to bring the situation back into the social norm.

By blowing the whistle for a foul, the officials are telling the 15,000 people in the stands, “Hey guys, don’t worry, this 7-foot, 290-pound adult didn’t just fall out of nowhere; there was a very violent action committed against them; you just couldn’t see it.”

Here is Joel Embiid, the Picasso of foul-grifting, presenting his version of Les femmes d'Alger.

If the NBA wants fans to fall back in love with the product, it must create a structure through the rules to eliminate the competitive advantage of foul-grifting. A genuine deterrent⁷ is required to shift the status quo and make ethical hoops not the exception, but the norm.

But maybe that’s not what they want; I could be completely off here. Perhaps they want what is happening right now, the engagement. I’m more of a purest who believes the game deserves more, but at the end of the day, maybe it’s all just Baby Faces and Heel turns.

Marzie Says Be Cool!

1. Any on-court player can take this shot

2. This is the best internet research I could do. The NBA could have internal information on these fines that it doesn’t share, but I have zero clue.

3. I suggest no one do this. It was not a fun watch.

4. I have zero data for this; only my eyes test after watching 2,000+ fouls. When you watch these clips, you’ll see what I’m talking about; if you watch enough games, you'll know exactly what I’m talking about.

5. If you’ve been to any NBA pick up games over the summer then you know, this is not a play that happens, it’s a non-basketball play.

6. NBA officials have a thankless job. NBA players are in the 99th percentile regarding speed, strength, and creativity, making it almost impossible to get every call correct.

7. Other than the hefty $2,000 flopping fine.