Luka Dončić is the master of the most abominable art form in the game of basketball. He worms his way into the mid-range, tricks his defender into jumping into his shot fake, jumps upwards into them, hears the ref’s whistle, hangs in the air and, on the descent, drains the shot for an ‘and-one.’
Performing this move consistently requires supreme skill, timing and utter basketball mastery. If the move is performed correctly, it is totally legal. But like any magic trick, the more you’ve seen it, the more annoying it becomes. A 2026 Lakers game is an experience defined by these sorts of moves, which are known colloquially as ‘foul baiting.’ While Luka foul-baited in Dallas, he has become increasingly reliant on it as a result of the Lakers’ lack of a competent lob threat and subpar shooting, a problem for a heliocentric Dončić. Despite this, Dončić creates the illusion of a sinking ship sailing smoothly, and the foul-baiting and manipulation are the price of the teams’ floatation in the playoff pack.
Some things that are deeply unpleasant to watch are horribly effective.
But Dončić’s free throw manufacturing is part of a larger phenomenon, a debate which revolves around the allegation that he, and teams like the Oklahoma City Thunder, aren’t ‘playing the right way.’ After beating the Thunder in December, Victor Wembanyama referred to the San Antonio Spurs as playing “pure and ethical basketball,” poking at the style of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Mark Daigenault. The Thunder’s playstyle is defined by consistent, unofficiated, swarming defense (which paralyzes referees by the volume of physicality), complemented by Shai’s foul-baiting on offense, for which people call him a ‘free throw merchant.’
The defensive manipulation of referees is different from Dončić’s little game, but they both rest in principle upon the impossibility of correctly officiating basketball games. Now, I am as sick of Dončić’s mid-range cat-and-mouse, and of the pack of hyenas that are Alex Caruso, Jalen Williams, Luguentz Dort and Cason Wallace, as everybody else is. But it is not the players’ fault that the rules and referees are more flexible than we want to admit. Now it remains true that rules should be tinkered with, especially with regard to offensive fouls. But no rule change can bear the weight of a team aggressively wielding more all-NBA caliber defenders than Michael Jordan has rings.
What I am getting at is that it is misguided to compulsively judge players and teams by some Naismithean criteria of ‘rightness’ because the thing that makes basketball — or anything — innovative is not abiding strictly by the written rules — it is finding holes in them. The stretching of rules, the pushing against the boundaries of imperfect laws, is the defining characteristic of basketball’s historical progression.
When players foul-bait, and when coaches overwhelm referees with physicality, an old truth is revealed: every rule lies upon a margin of ambiguous space in which lie the possibilities for creativity, freedom and innovation. It is equally true that watching somebody find that space for themselves can be unpleasant to watch, and this has been our collective reaction to these phenomena. But through them I have come to terms that in these experiments, foul-baiting and experimental defensive principles, we are watching the birth of the future of the game — or at least rule changes which might define it.
