Heated MVP races always raise hot-button issues. For Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, that’s his ability to get to the free-throw line. While 29 other fanbases might groan when the referees blow air in their whistle when he drives to the basket, folks within the Oklahoma City Thunder believe he should get to the line more often.
Thunder head coach Mark Daigneault theorized that Gilgeous-Alexander has been officiated differently since the All-Star break. While he didn’t have the statistical evidence on hand to back that up, he said it was a gut feeling reaction.
The drive-heavy scorer will average 30-plus points for a third straight season. This time though, he’s had a painfully average whistle among 30-point campaigns in NBA history. This year, he ranks 52nd out of 90 among 30-point seasons at free-throw attempt rate.
“I think Shai is being officiated a little bit differently right now, to be honest with you, specific to him,” Daigneault said. “Some of the plays they’re not getting and some of the plays they’re putting on the side instead of rewarding shots for is different than it was.”
Big-picture-wise, Daigneault cited this past weekend’s back-to-back as an example of an inconsistent whistle. He compared the Thunder’s 113-107 win over the Detroit Pistons to a football game with the amount of physicality allowed. The next night, the Thunder’s 121-105 win over the Milwaukee Bucks took nearly three hours to complete due to several fouls and stoppages.
Despite that, Daigneault hasn’t noticed a league-wide trend with the referees after the All-Star break like there was last season. Several NBA head coaches and players brought up how fewer calls were made in last season’s second half.
“I don’t think the whistle universally is different. Last year, the data supported that. It wasn’t like an opinion, that was a fact. The bigger thing with the whistle this year is like I think it is a lot different night-to-night,” Daigneault said. “I thought the way the game got called in Milwaukee 24 hours after the way the game was called in Detroit, we might as well have been playing in different leagues. The level of physicality that was allowed in the Detroit game and then the tightness of the whistle in Milwaukee was night and day. It is forcing us to calibrate to the crew every night.”
Even if Daigneault’s theory is correct about Gilgeous-Alexander not getting the calls he drew earlier this season, the MVP candidate has scorched courts with his historic scoring numbers. It shows that perhaps the criticisms that his scoring output relies heavily on the charity stripe are overblown for theatrics.
“I think they’re laying off some plays they got earlier in the year on him,” Daigneault said. “He’s still just as hard to guard. At the end of the day, fouling is about the legality of a defender. Whether or not the defender is legal, he puts guys in positions not to be legal quite a bit.”
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