About two weeks into this season, Trae Young already felt like giving up.
By late October, the NBA's new rules for eliminating on-court trickery for trapping defenders into fouls were in full force, and Young was feeling like the prime target. He was even featured in the video the league sent to all teams showing the plays they were no longer going to call shooting fouls. Twice.
He growled at officials in-game that the changes had gone too far. He complained publicly that he was being unfairly singled out. Then, on Oct. 28, the Atlanta Hawks guard bumped into official Ben Taylor while complaining about a non-call as he ran back up the floor -- Young has sworn it was an accident. He was assessed a technical foul during the game and then fined $15,000 for the incident.
The league office called a small news conference shortly after that to announce they were happy with the new rules. In other words: everyone should get used to it.
Young had to come to grips with his new reality.
"[I thought] I'm not going to win," Young said last week. "I knew the officiating wasn't going to be on my side this year. I had to get to the point where I was going to leave the refs alone."
Young has, cutting down the complaints and scaling back on the plays the NBA wanted eliminated from the game this season, such as hooking defenders' arms as he gathered to shoot or veering sideways into chasing defenders to create contact. And in doing so, it has kicked off some of the best play of his career.
With all of the grumbling from star players about the new rule interpretations -- and praise from others like Draymond Green thrilled at the change to help defenders -- things in the NBA have normalized.
Two months into the season, complaints have largely ceased and referees have scaled back a little after aggressive early enforcement. Season-over-season analysis shows that fouls are virtually the same from a year ago with about 1.5 fewer free throws per game.
"We made some mistakes early on, but we've made some adjustments just like the players," Monty McCutchen, NBA vice president and head of referee development and training, said. "We've been able to maintain the gains we made with the changes."