Article: In the first game of the Western Conference first round between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Memphis Grizzlies, Grizzlies guard Ja Morant painfully lay on the court after a drive and went straight to the locker room due to a hand injury, ending his battle in that game

Article: In the first game of the Western Conference first round between the Los Angeles Lakers and the Memphis Grizzlies, Grizzlies guard Ja Morant painfully lay on the court after a drive and went straight to the locker room due to a hand injury, ending his battle in that game. Subsequently, the Los Angeles Lakers turned a closely contested game into an easy away victory.

Soon after, a similar scene unfolded in Milwaukee, as Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo lay on the court in pain, clutching his back.

Without Antetokounmpo, the Bucks also lost their chance to win the first game of the series. Morant and Antetokounmpo, the two star players of their respective teams, not only suffered injuries in the playoffs but also share a commonality in the way they got injured.

Both Morant and Antetokounmpo fell hard after driving to the basket, with defenders attempting to create offensive fouls.

Anthony Davis successfully blocked Morant, while Kevin Love was called for a foul, sending Antetokounmpo to the free-throw line. With star players spending less and less time on the court, the league needs to start considering how to increase their playing time. Besides raising the threshold for awards, another issue worth discussing is whether the penalties after fouls are sufficient to protect players from unnecessary injuries caused by dangerous landings.

Although Morant and Antetokounmpo were absent in the following second game, neither suffered career-ending injuries and both returned to play in their respective series. However, we have seen many promising young stars whose careers were cut short due to injuries, so how to prevent the next player with a similar experience has become a primary concern.

The most extreme possibility is to prohibit any help defender from creating offensive fouls, an idea proposed by Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, in his personal blog in 2004.

Cuban acknowledged that the Mavericks did a great job of creating offensive fouls, and the players' willingness to endure physical pain for defensive purposes is commendable, but he believes this rule is "terrible" for the NBA.

He mentioned in the article, "This not only increases the risk of injury for both players, but also weakens some of the most exciting and watchable performances in basketball. Players no longer focus on making spectacular, incredible shots near the basket, but instead lower their heads and look at the ground to see if someone will try to obstruct them by creating offensive fouls." It is worth noting that this proposal would not reduce the blocks made by primary defenders to prevent players like Antetokounmpo from attacking the basket.

According to ESPN Stats & Info, he committed 233 offensive fouls in the past 10 seasons while driving to the basket, and this only happened when facing opponents who wanted to stop him at the frontline.

Furthermore, even if players can knock down help defenders without being called for traveling, NBA rules also prohibit players from creating "non-basketball contact" beyond the concept of the body cylinder, meaning that intentional unnecessary pushing actions against help defenders are not allowed. However, in this era where offensive efficiency is higher than ever, such changes seem to favor the offensive side too much. When Cuban proposed this in 2004, offensive efficiency was at its lowest, so they had to find a way to give offensive players an advantage. The league's average offensive efficiency in the 2003-04 season was 101.4 points per 100 possessions.

This season, that number has risen to 114.1. It is worth praising that long before Morant was born, the NBA already had a rule aimed at preventing player injuries, known as the "restricted area" under the basket, and since the 1997-98 season, the restricted area has been expanded to its current size (four feet in diameter).

The NBA was the first league to introduce the restricted area, and later the NCAA and FIBA also adopted this rule. However, since this rule was implemented 26 years ago, the game has undergone significant changes.

Back then, the offensive range was much smaller than it is now. In the 1997-98 season, only 16% of shots came from three-pointers, while this season, the proportion of three-point attempts has reached 39%. As long-distance three-pointers become more popular, the average shooting distance also continues to increase.

According to ESPN's statistics, in the 1997-98 season, the average distance of jump shots outside the paint was 18.4 feet (excluding logo shots), while this season, the average shooting distance outside the paint is 22.8 feet, an increase of over 4 feet.

Expanding the offensive space requires defenders to cover more area, which means they are more likely to move actively to legal defensive positions near the offensive player when they take off from outside the paint. According to the rules, such "delayed standing" defensive actions are prohibited. Defenders attempting to obstruct offensive players by creating offensive fouls are not allowed to "move into the path of the offensive player when the offensive player begins his upward motion."

In other words, as long as the offensive player takes off to attack the basket after receiving the ball, defenders cannot attempt to step into a position outside the restricted area to create offensive fouls at that moment. This is the reason why Love's defense against Antetokounmpo was called a foul. However, in reality, it is difficult for referees to simultaneously determine the position of the defender and the timing of the offensive player's takeoff. Therefore, whether the defender is inside the restricted area often becomes the primary criterion for distinguishing between blocking fouls and charging fouls, which is why Cuban advocates increasing the radius of the restricted area to five feet.

This proposal is not made rashly. As early as 2006, Cuban publicly suggested expanding the restricted area and hoped it would "cover the entire paint."

If the restricted area is larger, cases like Morant's injury would be considered fouls on Davis, so Davis would not attempt to create offensive fouls in the first place.

Instead, Davis might prepare to block Morant's shot, which he is good at. He contributed a total of seven blocks on Sunday, repeatedly thwarting the Grizzlies' attacks.