Kobe Bryant: Flagrant Fouls in Today’s NBA Make Me ‘Nauseous’

Thanks to a season sliced to pieces by injury, Los Angeles Lakers superstar Kobe Bryant has needed something to help pass the time.

NBA games are apparently not a feasible option in the Mamba's mind. Not today's games, he explained, via Dave McMenamin of ESPN Los Angeles: "It's more of a finesse game. It's more small ball, which, personally, I don't really care much for. I like kind of smash-mouth, old-school basketball because that's what I grew up watching. I also think it's much, much less physical."

It's hard to argue with what he's saying about the physicality, or lack thereof rather.

Referees seem quicker to their whistles than ever, but there are incidents in this league's past that make an overzealous approach to control justifiable, if not necessary.

Still, the quick chirps can seem a bit much at times, per Lakers Nation reporter Serena Winters:



It's not just the flagrant fouls that have drawn his ire, either. Bryant said the hand-check rule, introduced in the 2004-05 season, has made life more difficult on defenders and lowered the bar for today's offensive players, per McMenamin:

I like the contact. As a defensive player, if you enjoy playing defense, that's what you want. You want to be able to put your hands on a guy. You want to be able to hand check a little bit. The truth is, it makes the game [where] players have to be more skillful. Nowadays, literally anybody can get out there and get to the basket and you can't touch anybody. Back then, if guys put their hands on you, you had to have the skill to be able to go both ways, change direction, post up, you had to have a mid-range game because you didn't want to go all the way to the basket because you would get knocked ass over tea kettle.

Again, it's hard to say Bryant is speaking much other than the truth.

Still, it's interesting hearing one of today's stars singing the game-isn't-what...

About the Author