How to eliminate NBA's intentional foul rule: An analysis of Tom Ziller’s article
Many NBA fans find themselves sharing similar feelings during the fourth quarter of many games. The game is almost tied up, and then all of a sudden the team then starts intentionally fouling a bad shooter to get them to the free throw line. The intentional foul rule is one of the most questioned things of today’s professional basketball games. Tom Ziller, a writer for Sbnation, believes that the rule of the intentional foul should be taken away or be changed. Ziller has multiple reasons to support his argument, but can they be trusted or could they just be a biased opinion because he is impacted from the foul rule? An analysis will be done to figue if Ziller’s
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Looking at Ziller’s page on Sbnation, he has written many articles for the website and all are written about the NBA; However, Ziller could have a biased point of view just because he is a Sacramento King’s fan, and the Kings are one of the many teams impacted from the Intentional foul rule. Demarcus Cousins, one of the players on Sacramento, is a bad free throw shooter. Ethos is an appeal to convince an audience of the author’s credibility or character, Ziller’s profile and noticed that he was a big Sacrament Kings fan. One thing Ziller does is he only talks about the game being boring; For instance, he argues that some bad free throw shooter can’t get better (2013): “The most common comment on any discussion of intentional fouling is that the easiest fix is for the poor free throw shooting to just stop sucking at that part of the game. Well, yes. That's a fine solution! It does not seem to be attainable. Some players just seem to never be able to become good free throw shooters.”(Ziller). Ziller also uses a fallacy of ignorance in his quote. The reason of that being is because any person can get better at something they have to just practice. The arguments all go towards the writer’s side and is never argued against the other side. Like I mentioned before basketball is not all about being fun, but it is a strategic game and that’s what I believe Ziller doesn’t argue against. Another thing that connects to Ziller’s ethos appeal is that he is credible for his NBA information, because he only writes on the NBA nothing