Will James Harden's Ref-Baiting Come Back to Bite Him?

James Harden goes to the free-throw strip a lot. He’s attempted (192) and made (172) more freebies than anyone in the league this year. Is there something foul to the frequency with which he draws fouls? Is he a ref-baiter? And will it come back to bite him in the postseason?

In the online age, there are certain mythos which become treated as fact. "LeBron James has no clutch gene." "Kobe Bryant is a ball hog." "Derrick Rose is mentally weak." These are troll-driven narratives which don’t hold up to scrutiny, but the ubiquity of that false mentality allows them to become accepted as true.

The latest of such fallacies is James Harden's ref-baiting and how it comes back to bite him in the playoffs.

Does Harden Ref-Bait?

Ref-baiting, in spite of what the term seems to imply, is not sticking a ref on the end of a hook when you go fishing. It’s a disingenuous way of attaching a negative moniker to a positive skill. The implication is that a player is tricking a referee into calling a foul where none existed.

This is not what Harden does. He actually gets defenders to commit fouls. What the refs do is their job: calling the fouls the defender committed. If anything, what Harden does should be called defender-baiting. And that’s a good thing.

Watching him play, you could argue that he “snaps his head back” or "flails about" to exaggerate contact. Or, you can say, he initiates it. Those arguments are moot, but I will address them anyway.

Yes, Harden does exaggerate contact. Pretty much every star in the league does. You just see him exaggerate it more because he draws it more.

He has been cited for the league just twice for it, this incident being the second:

Harden was fined for it, and it's been over a year since the last incident. But even in that case, there was an actual foul. He was called out for exaggerating the level of contact, but the contact itself was still real. Embellishment doesn't invalidate the call.

Nor does initiating the contact. If a player pump-fakes, the defender bites and jumps, and the shooter launches himself into his airborne opponent, it’s a shooting foul, even though the offensive player initiates the contact. Why is that?

The confusion is that the issue is not over who initiates contact but whether the defender has a legal guarding position. 

The actual rules, per NBA.com, might help clear things up. The boldface parts are my emphasis:

"

a. A dribbler shall not (1) charge into an opponent who has established a legal guarding position, or (2) attempt to dribble between two opponents, or (3) attempt to dribble between an opponent and a boundary, where sufficient space is not available for illegal contact to be avoided.

b. If a defender is able to establish a legal position in the straight line path of the dribbler, the dribbler must avoid contact by changing direction or ending his dribble.

c. The dribbler must be in control of his body at all times. If illegal contact occurs, the responsibility is on the dribbler.

d. If a dribbler has sufficient space to have his head and shoulders in advance of his defender, the responsibility for illegal contact is on the defender.

e. If a dribbler has established a straight line path, a defender may not crowd him out of that path.

"

So, both parties have a responsibility in terms of distinguishing between legal and illegal contact. The defender has to establish legal guarding position. The offensive player has to stay in control of his body and not initiate contact if the defender has established position.

But the dribbler has the first right to any unguarded position. As long as he has control of his body, establishes a path or has his head and shoulders past the defender, the space belongs to him.

On the other hand, the rules for the defender stipulate specifically, "Contact initiated by the defensive player guarding a player with the ball is not legal."

In other words, an offensive player can legally initiate contact. A defensive player cannot. 

The reason it’s a shooting foul in the above hypothetical is that the airborne defender hasn't established position. 

Harden is a genius at recognizing and initiating contact in such situations. That’s not flopping; it’s being smart. Any flopping or flailing which follows is irrelevant. The contact is the reason for the foul.

Kirk Goldsberry of Grantland agrees:

"

James Harden is one of the smartest on-court players in the NBA. Perhaps more than anyone else, he understands the rules of the game and has engineered an approach to scoring that takes full advantage of these rules. It may not always be pretty (although sometimes it is), but it is almost always productive. Between his Eurostep and his incredible ability to get fouled, Harden might be a referee’s nightmare, but he’s also one of the best scorers in the league.

"

Ergo, Harden does not ref-bait; he defender-baits. And he does it very well.

Should Harden Defender-Bait?

In all three of his seasons with the Houston Rockets, Harden has attempted at least nine free-throw attempts per game and shot over 80 percent on them. That makes him one of just 11 players in history to eclipse those numbers three times.

Here are the others and the number of seasons in which they accomplished the feat:

Player	Seasons
Oscar Robertson*	9
Jerry West*	8
Allen Iverson	5
Kobe Bryant	4
Adrian Dantley*	4
Michael Jordan*	4
Tiny Archibald*	3
Paul Arizin*	3
Kevin Durant	3
James Harden	3

*Hall of Fame Player

So each of the eight players who have accomplished that feat three times are in the Hall of Fame, and apart from Harden, the others all won MVP at some point in their careers. That’s not horrible company to be in. Were those guys ref-baiters too?

Strategically, it’s great basketball. For a player like Harden, the free throw is the most efficient shot there is. This season he has drained 172-of-192 from the stripe. Consider what that means.

Every free-throw attempt counts as 0.44 possessions. The reason it’s not a half-possession is that there are a fraction of times where a free-throw attempt doesn’t use a half-possession: when there are technical free throws, and-1s or when there is a shooting foul on a three-point attempt.

That means that Harden has scored 172 points on 84.48 possessions from the stripe. That’s the equivalent of a 101.8 field-goal percentage or shooting 67.9 percent from the three-point line. That’s pretty efficient, and there's no reason to change it. 

A big part of the reason those players are/were great is that they knew how to take advantage of the free-throw stripe. You can’t blame Harden for doing the same.

Does Defender-Baiting Work in the Playoffs?

A bogus argument has been established in the Harden-is-a-ref-baiter narrative. It basically says that Harden’s flopping works fine in the regular season, but when he gets to the postseason—when refs are more inclined to swallow their whistles—it fails.

There’s a fancy Latin term for this type of flawed logic: cum hoc ergo propter hoc. It means “with this therefore because of this.” The fallacy is in assuming a cause/effect relationship between two things which are true but which may not even be related.

Charles Dharapak/Associated Press

For example: The Giants beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl in 2008, then Barack Obama was elected President. The Giants beat the Patriots in the Super Bowl in 2012, and Obama was re-elected. It would be silly to argue that Obama's and the Giants' victories had any relationship at all, much less one of cause and effect.

Things being simultaneously true doesn’t establish relationship, much less cause and effect. For the “whistle swallowing” argument to hold, there would have to be more of an argument linking the two facets together.

But that’s impossible because neither of the premises of the argument are even true. Refs don’t call fewer fouls in the postseason, and Harden doesn’t struggle to get to the stripe in the playoffs.

In fact, the average number of free throws taken by each team per game has risen in the postseason nine times in the last 10 years and stayed the same once:

Furthermore, during Harden’s tenure in Houston, he’s averaged 9.6 free-throw attempts per game in the regular season and 9.7 during the postseason. So he’s actually getting to the line more in the playoffs.

That Harden gets to the line more often in the playoffs—when refs actually call more fouls—really throws a wrench into the argument. If two things being true is insufficient to prove cause and effect, certainly their not being true is enough to dismiss the argument entirely.

That’s not to say that Harden hasn’t had postseason struggles. During his two years in Houston his true shooting percentage has fallen from 60.5 in the regular season to 53.3 during the playoffs. While that validates a separate discussion, it’s not vital to resolving this one. His struggles have nothing to do with getting to the line.

This notion that Harden is just a ref-baiter who is going to have his ways come back to bite him in the postseason is just wrong in both its terminology and logic. The facts are that he’s fantastic at drawing fouls, that players who are tend to be great and that it’s a talent which doesn’t go away in the playoffs.