>Abusing the lack of familiarity refs had with these...
>"tactics".

Jamal Crawford kicks out his leg & ALWAYS lands on the floor every time he shoot a jumper but he ain't exactly getting to the line a 100 time. He's the all-time leader in 4 point plays but ain't nobody complaining about it.

Harden, Chris Paul, Westbrook also kicks out his leg when the opportunity presents itself & even when Reggie was doing it he wasn't living at the line.

>Harden would hate the way they called fouls in the 90's. He'd also
>have a shit-eating grin every time he realized that he would
>actually get to take his man one-on-one

He still does play 1-on-1, teams don't double Harden on the perimeter when he's doing his dribbling exhibition trying to beat his PRIMARY defender.

Teams collapse the paint once he beats his primary defender which would have been legal pre-2003. If teams were able to collapse the paint on a speed demon like 2001 AI when zone defense was still illegal then Harden's fat ass isn't exempt.

In 2005-06, 30 year old Iverson had the best scoring & also most efficient season of his career (better than his 2001 MVP season when zone defense was illegal).

Maybe this might have had something to do with it: "New rules were introduced to curtail hand-checking, clarify blocking fouls and call defensive three seconds to open up the game."

>or that when he ran a
>pick and roll, the defense would be called for a technical
>foul every time they left multiple defenders in the lane to
>lay off his teammates that weren't knock down.

We are talking about the same dude treating Dwight as if he's Rodman. You can trap him when he has the ball (which was legal) & he would ignore Dwight just to throw it to a 3 point shooter after pounding the air out of the ball.

Zone defense didn't stop the Suns PnR, Amare would be averaging 15 points if he played w/ Harden. When Dwight got the ball in the postseason he put up points but Harden doesn't want any part of it Last season, Josh Smith was actually better at finding Dwight on PnRs than Harden. Dude is more interested in being Iverson than Nash except he isn't a freak athlete like Iverson.