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At what point did the rules stop being the rules?

Was palming intended to keep players with enormous hands from having a huge advantage?
It was intended to clarify the difference between dribbling and carrying the ball. Because what passes for dribbling can sometimes be more in the nature of a carry.

The way today's players often use their palms to cup the ball to better control it ...even sometimes seemingly to hold it for a split second between dribbles ...were whistled as palming violations in past decades. But nowadays refs just ignore it. The rule technically still exists, but seems like refs have decided they're just no longer gonna enforce that one.
 
Mavs fan here, and Luka gets away with changing his pivot foot several times in each game. He isn't the only one, but he benefits a lot from being allowed to do that. My other pet peeve is they no longer call fouls with the body. I don't give a damn if they got the ball clean, if the defender's momentum knocks the offensive player down, it's a foul. Allowing palming makes it tough to defend, that rule was put in for a reason.

The best way to watch an NBA game is to assume there are no rules, that way I'm not constantly pissed at the officials. When you watch it that way, you catch on that they really only call something if it's totally blatant. The officials are pretty consistent in ignoring the rules otherwise. When they first started keeping turnovers as an official statistic in the mid 1970s, NBA teams typically averaged a little over 20 turnovers per game, now it's about 12-13. It's mostly about the refs not enforcing the rules.
 
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The NBA is really bad about shooting too many 3-point shots and killing the flow of the game. Most players will pass up a wide open 2 for a contested 3. I say let's really muck up the NBA by adding a 4-point line.

Not all 2's are created equally. Long 2's are the worst shot in basketball, statistically speaking.
 
They still call those occasionally but only on Kentucky.
Watched the 2012 Kentucky vs Louisville Final 4 game last night. Game has changed a ton since then, looked like they were playing in a phone booth which really benefited Kentucky and Cal of course. Louisville had a group of good shooters but even Pitino didn’t spread them out. The craziest thing was the charge calls on Kentucky during the game. Especially now that the rule has changed, the calls were crazy. Under no set of rules were any of them actual charges, one was a judgment call where Davis bumped with Dieng and Dieng flopped like a fish, but that was the only close one. You could tell the refs decided before the game they were going to call every drive with contact as a charge on Kentucky. It was the only reason Louisville was able to hang around in that game.
 
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