Trae Young is going to have his way with officiating and foul line

Trae Young was fantastic in this game against the Knicks, going for 32 points, 10 assists and 7 rebounds, but he also continued to take advantage of the NBA’s flawed foul system and he went 9-9 from the line, all of which came in the fourth-quarter of the game. 

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Down the stretch, Trae Young was terrific, but he did draw a lot of fouls that made you scratch your head. Were some of them fouls? Absolutely, but the vast majority of the time, Young was jumping into or diving into the Knicks’ defenders, leaving the Knicks asking the refs, “what else are we supposed to do there?”

Credit to Young in this game and this season because while many players and executives hate the way he abuses the foul rules, he has found a “loophole” for the NBA to fix moving forward. Trae Young is doing nothing wrong in terms of the rules, but his foul shots and drawn fouls can be viewed as “cheap” at times. 

Overall, winning is the name of the game, especially in the playoffs, and Trae Young does an excellent job of putting his team in a position to win. It was very apparent in Game 1 of this series, especially in the fourth-quarter, that Trae Young is going to have his way with the officiating in this series, which is why the Knicks have to lock-in a little tighter defensively. 

They cannot allow Young to drive downhill towards the rim where he can easily draw a foul call and get to the line for what seems like an automatic two points. Whether it is doubling him on a ball-screen or going under the screen to stay attached to him, the Knicks will need to figure something out because they cannot keep sending him to the line late in games on “ticky-tack” fouls.