Do not ban the charge, NBA

When Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo and Memphis Grizzlies guard Ja Morant both suffered injuries while attempting to plow through help defenders en route to the rim during NBA first-round playoff action on Sunday evening, a vocal contingent of NBA intelligentsia called to ban the charging foul.

To which I say: Poppycock. The charge is good.

To which you might say: The charge is only good to people who use the word poppycock.

It would be my only recourse against Antetokounmpo or Morant with a full head of steam, but I am not alone. What chance would anyone have of stopping either high-flying superstar if nothing impeded him from relentlessly attacking the basket? I get it. Dunks are cool, and injuries are not, but there would be untold ramifications if the league removed the charge from a defender's arsenal. It is all that they have.

From the elimination of hand-checking to an increased emphasis on freedom of movement, the NBA has spent two decades increasing offensive advantages, and it has worked. Scores in the 60s led the league to implement significant rules changes after the Detroit Pistons won the championship in 2004. That season had yielded the lowest points-per-game average since 1955 (excluding the ugly lockout-shortened 1999 campaign). Scoring has risen steadily to 114.7 points per game this year, the highest average since 1970.

The Bucks scored 81 first-half points without Antetokounmpo against the Miami Heat on Wednesday.

As Philadelphia 76ers coach Doc Rivers said when asked if the charge should be eliminated after Sunday's injuries, "Not at all, unless they just want a 250-250 game." And it was Rivers' best player, Joel Embiid, who was at risk when Boston Celtics guard Marcus Smart tried drawing a charge on a similar play weeks ago.

"The rule that incentivizes Marcus Smart to undercut Joel Embiid like that just has to go," Nate Duncan, who led a presentation entitled "Fixing the Charge" at the 2019 MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference, shared on his Twitter account at the time of the foul. "An incredibly dangerous play that is encouraged."

In other words, we should limit the reigning Defensive Player of the Year's options to stop the likely MVP. If you do not like the uniformity that the 3-point boon has wrought, wait until players can run layup lines, too.

If you want Embiid to average 45 points a night, that is fine. You just do not get to laud the pluckiness of Kyle Lowry. You do not get to admire late-career turns of one-time perennial All-Stars like Kevin Love and Blake Griffin, who both rank top five in charges drawn per minute. If not for their basketball IQ on defense, they might not be able to stay on the court, and I, for one, appreciate when the old guys have still got it.

"I can't normally block a shot, and I can't energize my team with a crazy dunk," Lowry told Chris Herring, then of FiveThirtyEight, months before a title cemented his legacy. "But I can take a charge at a big moment in a game, and I think my teammates appreciate me laying myself out there. That's my energizing play."

The charge also fueled the young Oklahoma City Thunder, arguably the NBA's hardest-playing team and certainly its most surprising this season. They and Lowry's Heat are the only teams to average more than one drawn charge per game this season. Only about one drawn charge is called per game between both teams. They are rare, but charges level the playing field, and is that not what we want from competition?

You must be one of those guys who tries to draw charges in a pickup game, you say. I am not, but I would not lose respect for anyone who did, and I very much enjoyed Lowry thrice trying to draw charges in the greatest All-Star Game ever played. The NBA is not pickup. There are real stakes. Officials and everything.

Antetokounmpo knows full well the risk he is taking every time his 242 pounds of muscle careen into the paint. He has led the NBA in charges committed each of the past five years and told Herring in December, "I just try to play through contact, and [hope] it takes a toll on my opponent more than it does on me." This time, it did not, but Antetokounmpo has two MVPs and a ring to show for his brutish brand of basketball.

Likewise, Morant dismissed Colin Cowherd when the Fox Sports commentator suggested "distributors and shooters" are more sustainable points guards in the long run than the daredevils who may not be as skilled. Again, Rivers nailed it: "Ja Morant can jump over a human being, and he tried to do it. That's part of it."

Duncan reported that roughly a third of charges could be eliminated by expanding the restricted area from four to six feet, and that might have prevented injuries to both Antetokounmpo and Morant. That is fine, but actually calling the existing regulations — the rule of verticality and offensive fouls when moving defender "has established a legal guarding position" — could do more to incentivize challenges rather than charges.

I find it strange when people suggest planting oneself between an offensive player and the rim is not defense. It is less within the spirit of the game to leap into a crowd hunting for the foul more than a bucket. Besides, the charge has been in place since 1928, well before the NBA was established, when longtime official rules interpreter Oswald Tower declared, "If the dribbler's path is blocked, he is expected to pass or shoot. This is, he ought not to try to dribble by an opponent unless there is a reasonable chance of getting by without contact, but more attention than hitherto is to be directed to the dribbler's responsibility."

In other words, the game is meant to encourage ball movement and shooting on one end, sound defensive principles on the other and skill over force on both — the very thing that makes the NBA so popular today.

The charge is good, people.