In a way, modern technology has turned all sports fans into pedants. Watching sports is supposed to be visceral and kinetic and emotional—you scream when you are happy, you scream when you are mad, you lose your mind whatever happens, that’s the point—but the level of granular detail available today can make it feel like you are watching the game in some sort of lab somewhere, combing through data and poring over microbes. We have known what “safe” and “goal” and “a catch” were for our entire lives, simply by looking at them, but now, when we can slow everything down frame by frame, we can talk ourselves out of anything.Common sense says, “that’s a catch” or “that’s not a foul.” But in the age of replay, countless angles, and electronic sensors, the only way to keep order is to be a stickler on every single rule, down to the most absurd level. Replay has transformed us all into hall monitors.
Which brings us to Giannis Antetokounmpo’s free throws.
One of the most impressive things about Giannis Antetokounmpo is how few strong opinions the average NBA fan has about him. This is a two-time MVP who may well be on his way to leading his team to a title and whose jersey is perpetually among the best-selling in the sport. And yet he remains oddly under the radar, doesn’t he? He is neither beloved nor derided. The drama that forever surrounds LeBron James, or Kevin Durant, or Chris Paul, or James Harden, it always eludes Giannis.
Part of this is his personality: He is a mild superstar in the Tim Duncan realm, quieter, who rarely Tweets—his most recent Tweet is from a month and a half ago—and usually just says things like, “Great win, Bucks!” (Giannis served three months of Greek military service before the 2016-17 season, and hardly anyone noticed.) But much of it derives from his game, which is incredible and overwhelming without ever feeling like a revolutionary leap forward. LeBron was Karl Malone with the handle and court vision of John Stockton; Stephen Curry changed the notion of what “stretching the floor” really meant. Giannis? Giannis is a physical marvel in every sense of the word, who moves like a point guard but towers over everyone, with arms that can block shots from the parking lot; he looks like the sort of video game creation Jon Bois would come up with. He is a smart, savvy player, with underappreciated passing skills, but his best skill remains that unprecedented frame: He really does look like a mythical creature.
This is all impressive, but it doesn’t make for passionate feelings: You get off your feet, either to cheer or boo, for Trae Young a lot more often. Which means the only thing you can really get Giannis on, the only open area to poke at, is his free throw shooting. Specifically, how long it takes him to do it.
Thus, this playoff season, opposing crowds are reminding us they can count.
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Giannis Antetokounmpo, it has been discovered, takes too long to shoot free throws. According to NBA rules, every player has a 10-second limit to shoot free throws, or they lose their shot. This is rarely called. In fact, I can’t remember a time I’d ever seen it called, or even known anyone who was aware of the rule … until it became a cudgel with which to bludgeon Giannis. Giannis has always taken a longer-than-usual time to shoot free throws and was first called for the violation way back in 2016. But once it was called this postseason, it turned into Giannis’ thing. James Harden openly mocked him, rolling his eyes and waving his arms in a very meme-able way, and then crowds got into it, and now every opposing fanbase counts the seconds when he’s at the line. The idea seems partly to bother him at the line—which doesn’t seem to be working; he’s shooting roughly the same percentage he always shoots, albeit with an occasional airball—but mostly it’s to try to get a referee to call the violation and take away Giannis’ free throws altogether. It is a weaponized chant.
It’s not just fans, though. The Hawks have formally petitioned the NBA to enforce the 10-second rule, and, in a nice touch, the Nets actually believe they would have won their series with the Bucks if the rule had been enforced. Here’s The Athletic’s Sam Amick, on that theoretical scenario:
"It’s June 19 in Brooklyn, where the Nets have just survived a seven-game Eastern Conference semifinals series against Milwaukee and Kevin Durant is being rightly hailed as the savior of the NBA’s newest Super Team.
No Kyrie Irving. A hobbling James Harden. Yet the Nets, who all smiled so wide every time Antetokounmpo was whistled for free-throw violations on all 14 of his attempts and the Bucks fell so far behind, are moving on because Durant was simply better than the Bucks’ two-time MVP and the league’s rules were enforced.
The Nets, who watched Antetokounmpo take eleven-plus seconds on five of his eight makes that night and top out at 12.7 seconds, would be well within reason to see that as the difference on their season-ending night. As it were, they lost Game 7 in overtime after Durant’s incredible jumper at the end of regulation was ruled a two-pointer because his enormous sneaker edged over the three-point line. That, as opposed to this free-throw debacle, is a rule that is consistently and reliably enforced."
And this is the pedantry again. The idea that a weird rule about free throws should somehow be equivalent to the rule that you have to be shooting from behind the 3-point line for the shot to count as three points is nonsensical. It flattens the sport, to the point that an otherwise legitimately smart NBA writer seems to be arguing that the Nets deserved to beat the Bucks because Giannis Antetokounmpo took too long to shoot his free throws. Is this really how anyone would want this wonderful sport with these jaw-droppingly skilled athletes doing mind-blowing things to be decided? Or are we just trolling?
It is one thing to count down Giannis’ free throw timing in order to mess him up at the line: That is in the grand tradition of fan behavior, frankly, what you’re supposed to do. But the idea that a series should be decided by this, the idea that this is how we should want this to be resolved, is bizarre pedantry in a sport that has always been at its best when visionaries ignore pointless boundaries. It’s turning people into hall monitors. It’s turning people into cops.
Will Leitch is a contributing editor at New York Magazine, national columnist for MLB, a writer for Medium and the founder of Deadspin. Subscribe to his free weekly newsletter and buy his novel “How Lucky,” out from Harper Books now.