I guess it depends on your definition of “unnatural”. He absolutely was taking threes that he would never take except he felt a man on him, so he would go up and flail. I don’t see it much different than harden driving, feeling a little contact and flailing
I think that's dependent on your definition of "
flail"
I'm also thinking you're focusing on a very minute total of fouls drawn. How many times did Dame draw 3 foul shots last season?
so then, the average was 0.5 fouls per 100-possessions. And that was a team average. Dame wasn't the only Blazer to have drawn those fouls. CJ, Melo, RoCo, Powell, Trent, Simons...all drew some of those fouls last season. So then, what is a reasonable estimate of what Dame drew...somewhere between 0.1-0.2 per 100-possessions?. At 0.2, that would be about 3 FT's every 5 games or so. That would have been 40-50 FT's that he'd have supposedly lost last season under the current rules. He shot 484 FT's so then, say 45 out of 484.
That would be a 9.3% reduction in FTA's. But he's had a 54% reduction in FTA's per 100-possessions and a 53% reduction in his FT rate.
in other words, whether or not Dame embellished his 3pt FT rate isn't much of a factor here. Furthermore, the simple fact that Dame's FG% at the rim has dropped from .631 to .550 almost guarantees that officials are allowing defenders to get away with a lot more contact to Dame in the paint. That has nothing to do with "flailing" on three's
even if Dame had doubled his number of 3pt fouls, there would still be a huge gap in his FT rates. And by last season Dame had become the most feared player for shooting long three's in the league so there would be tighter defense of Dame past half-court and tighter defense always draws more fouls, especially if there was a big focus by opponents on rotating to Dame behind the arc....and that's the case
