NBA Reacts: Is it a skill to draw fouls?

Welcome to SB Nation Reacts, a survey of fans across the NBA. Each week, we send out questions to the most plugged in L.A. Clippers fans, and fans across the country. Sign up here to join Reacts.

Earlier this week, Paul George lamented the fact that he’s never been able to earn free throws at a rate commensurate with how much contact he plays through. George has consistently in the top quartile or so of drawing shooting fouls, but not in the elite range of James Harden, Trae Young, Joel Embiid, Bradley Beal in recent years, or even Kawhi Leonard.

George said that he has never learned the art of foul drawing, or as he put it, he hasn’t “got into the flopping game”. However, he does have some admiration for the players who do manipulate referees.

“It’s really hard, it’s really hard,” the Clippers star said after Sunday’s loss to Brooklyn, which ended on a high-profile flop by one of the league’s best practitioners, Harden. “But in today’s game, it’s smart, you know what I mean? It’s smart. They control the refs. They got the refs in they pocket, so, you know, kudos to the guys who are great at that part of the game.”

Later in the week, George reiterated that he though players who can get free trips to the line are “offensive geniuses”, even if he thinks flopping as a whole is bad for basketball. As it turns out, his opinion is one shared by much of the SB Nation fan community. In the latest NBA Reacts survey, that tool is a true skill in the league today.

While fans may appreciate a player’s ability to draw contact and get a whistle, that doesn’t mean they like seeing it happen.

According to the same survey, nearly every fan polled said they would like to see the NBA regulate soft-contact fouls out of the game.

Even if George can’t get to the line as regularly as he’d like, that hasn’t diminished Clippers fans’ faith in his performance, or that of the team. According to the most recent SB Nation Reacts survey, a full 100 percent of responding Clippers fans are confident the team is headed in the right direction. That’s up from 92 percent last week and 86 percent two weeks ago.

If you want to see more Clippers content included in SB Nation Reacts each week, we need Clippers fans to jump into the fray. You can not only give your input on the NBA at large, but weigh in on how you think the Clippers are doing each week.

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