This is not the NBA game we were told to expect. If there is one takeaway from the season’s opening week, it’s that we are drowning in a sea of foul calls and free-throw attempts and, at times, it is making the games unwatchable. On Friday, the Philadelphia 76ers and Toronto Raptors combined to shoot 99 free throws — the most in an NBA regulation game since 2017 — despite the league’s No.
1 foul magnet, Joel Embiid , missing the contest. That same night, the Atlanta Hawks and Charlotte Hornets combined for 56 fouls and 69 free throws in a game that took just over two and a half hours to complete. That was a decline for Atlanta; the Hawks and Brooklyn Nets combined for 71 free throws two nights earlier.
Advertisement The stories go on. The Memphis Grizzlies and Utah Jazz had 77 foul shots in their opener Wednesday; Memphis returned two nights later to combine for 72 with the Houston Rockets . Even on bad nights, teams are eating at the line: On Saturday, amid what was otherwise one of the most depressing offensive outings of the young season, Denver was in the bonus at the 9:58 mark of the second quarter against the LA Clippers and at the 7:06 mark of the fourth.
Ah, yes, the bonus. Might as well begin quarters with both teams in it at this point. I can’t even remember seeing a “foul to give” situation this past week, because everybody is out of team fouls long before any last-shot scenario might arise.
Those specific outliers underscore a larger point about th.