When you are a big man in the NBA, you will consistently take a beating. It just comes with the territory of banging around under the basket. But when you are a liability at the free throw line, many teams decide to just take their chances and foul a big man and deal with the results at the free throw line. Lakers center Dwight Howard only shoots 49% at the free throw line. So he most certainly falls into that category.
But the problem becomes all the fouls and beating that Dwight ends up taking because of his free throw woes. Fouls that recently resulted in a shoulder injury that has left the center sidelined for the Lakers most recent stretch of games. It appears the Lakers don’t like how hard some of the fouls have been and decided to do something about it.
Via T.J. Simers of the Los Angeles Times:
There’s a protocol to airing opinions or complaints with the NBA. And we’ve done that.” said Mitch Kupchak. ”The game has evolved and like a lot of other sports where attention is now being given to protect players, the NBA is interested in doing so as well. I don’t know if they will review our concerns, but [hard fouls] have resulted in injury to one of our players.”
Not exactly sure what the Lakers expect to accomplish by filing this complaint but I can’t be upset at them trying to protect one of their star players.
We’ll just have to wait and see how the NBA responds.