LeBron James isn’t happy about the way he is officiated these days.
Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James was frustrated on Sunday after a 110-94 loss to the San Antonio Spurs, because he felt that not enough fouls were called on his drives to the hoop. He thinks that the league’s referees are more worried about shooters getting barely touched than bigger players getting manhandled as they try to grind their way to the hoop.
"“We’re at a point now where we protect the shooter more than the driver,” James said to ESPN. “There’s no reason I should be going to the line four times in a game when I drive 100 times to the paint and I’m getting hit and slapped and grabbed and whatever and whatnot. We protect the shooter. That’s what it’s turned into. ‘Chicks dig the long ball,’ and that’s what it’s about.”"
The ‘chicks dig the long ball’ part of that was pretty funny, but he is totally right in one sense. The league is calling fouls on jump shots with more regularity than ever; however, teams around the NBA are shooting more 3-pointers than ever as well. So, that argument must be taken into account.
James is only averaging 6.0 free throws per contest this year, and that is the second-lowest number of his career. But there isn’t much LeBron can do about the refs swallowing their whistles.
If he really wants to change how many fouls get called on him per game, then maybe he should spend the summer working almost exclusively on 3-point shooting. Jason Kidd proved that a below-average shooter can develop into an efficient threat later in a career, and LeBron has far better shooting touch than Kidd did in his early days.
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Throughout an entire season, James has only shot over 40 percent from downtown once. He should challenge himself to make it a regular occurrence in the final stages of his basketball career.