Brad Davison Drawing Four Charges in a Game Is Nothing to Celebrate - GQ

NC State guard Devon Daniels gets called for the charge against Wisconsin guard Brad Davison during a college basketball game

Bomani Jones is absolutely right.

On Tuesday, the No. 22 Wisconsin Badgers beat the NC State Wolfpack, 79-75, as part of the ACC-Big Ten Challenge. The deciding play came with 18 seconds left, when Wisconsin guard Brad Davison drew a charge on a bad call. Davison jumped up and pumped his fist like Tiger Woods after winning the Masters. Now to be clear, knowing you probably just won the game for your team is obviously worthy of celebration. The problem, however, is this was not the first charge Davison had taken that evening. It was his fourth. That is not fist-pump worthy.

And yet! A certain cross-section of basketball fans have run (and then flopped) to Davison's defense, with their ire specifically directed at ESPN's Bomani Jones, who issued a good and righteous take on taking a charge. (High Noon mistakenly reported Davison had taken five charges):

Jones's Twitter mentions are usually a dumpster fire, and that is especially true this week. A few of the best/worst reactions:

Offensive fouls should of course exist. When a player extends their off arm into a defender and knocks them down, it's an obvious offensive foul. When a player barrels over a defender, especially in the lead-up to a layup or dunk, it's an obvious offensive foul. It's also totally understandable to oversell that sort of contact—what many would call a flop—to get the attention of the referee. Flopping exists in every sport, and every sport requires a certain amount of gamesmanship.

But celebrating that gamesmanship is weird. (And corny!) Players who rely on the charge aren't defensive masterminds thinking one step ahead of their opponents; they're usually led-footed defenders who have no other choice but to hope they get bailed out before they get crossed over or dunked on. Most high school teams have a Person Who Takes Charges. They're the coach's pet who plays way too many minutes and enthusiastically claps at everything. (Davison, for the record, appears to be a talented and valuable member of Wisconsin's squad, all the more reason why his four-charge performance is annoying.)

Of course, not everyone singing Davison's praises would argue he's a defensive mastermind—they'd say the charge itself is only developed through approximately 10 percent luck, 20 percent skill, 15 percent concentrated power of will. It's qwhite an absurd opinion born from the glorification of Hoosiers-style basketball. Charging drills are disproportionally prevalent amongst youth/high school coaches, who overemphasize the importance of knowing how to stand and then fall half a second before getting annihilated by an incoming player. There's nothing gritty about taking a charge. It usually hurts a bunch, it often doesn't work, and it slows the game down to an unwatchable grind.

People whine about James Harden drawing too many fouls en route to the basket, and not without reason—many of the calls Harden gets are legitimate, but he also can slow a game down to an unwatchable grind. Harden's routine often relies on exploiting what he knows will encourage a ref to blow their whistle. The difference, of course, is Harden only got to this point by developing an MVP-level skillset, becoming one of the most technically sound offensive players of all time. There were untold hours of practice involved, which he isn't exactly celebrated for, and that's fine. But the same people who really don't like Harden's supernatural foul-drawing ability have decided Davison and other charge takers are the real basketball heroes, equipped with prim and proper fundamentals passed down from Bob Cousy himself. The art of taking a charge does not require all that much practice or skill. In fact, it's not an art at all. Taking a charge is for dorks, and revering the charge is even dorkier.

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