If you tune into the Milwaukee Bucks-Boston Celtics playoff game tonight, I want you to check out how may times Giannis Antetokounmpo commits a traveling violation. I don’t mean how many times he is called for traveling–because that number will likely be zero–but the actual number of times he takes far more than the two steps allowed by the rules of basketball.
For decades, traveling has been a joke in the NBA. But it was usually a guy taking one extra step on the way to the basket on a layup. Now, “fancy footwork” dominates the sport. Star players especially are being allowed to pick up the basketball and take as many steps as are necessary to shake free of their defender. In game one, I noticed that Giannis has already mastered all three phases of the Traveling Trifecta. On a couple of plays in the lane, he pivoted on both feet–which is one of the easiest traveling calls to make. Giannis also takes the double-backstep to set up a fade away jumper–which is also a pretty easy traveling call. And of course, he uses the “Euro-step” in every attack to the basket.
As an official, I consider the Euro-step to be the scourge of basketball. For some reason, the powers that be have decided to allow offensive players to pick up their dribble, take one huge-step in one-direction and then jump onto their other foot in the opposite direction to get around a defender (who likely knows that the player with the ball just traveled by resetting what had been his pivot foot). The Euro-step is a go-to move for players at all levels now–including sixth-grade traveling teams, where kids pick up the ball at the 3-point-line and think they can make it all the way to the rim without having to dribble again.
In fairness to Giannis, he is not the worst traveler in the NBA. Check out the video footage of walking that LeBron James is allowed to get away with–including pivoting on both feet twice to gain about ten feet of space on the court. But they have nothing on the Houston Rockets’ James Harden–who can fill hours of highlight reels with flagrant traveling violations that never, ever get called. In their game one against Minnesota, Harden hit the biggest shot of the game after picking up his dribble–taking two steps forward, then two steps backward, before jumping back behind the 3-point line to nail the jumper. The TV announcers pointed out that it was clearly a traveling violation–but then laughed that off.
If the NBA is going to make dribbling “optional” we may as well retitle the sport “European Team Handball” and let guys pick it up and run with it for as far as they want–or Aussie Rules Football, where dribbling is required only every 18-feet.
