I thought that was poorly phrased by the source. Antoine can be extremely
physical, especially when he has a size advantage (cue rant on Toine playing
small forward... ). But I do think he avoids contact when he operates around
the basket. I've said this many times, so I won't completely rehash it here,
but I think Antoine's poor free throw shooting early in his career
conditioned him to try to get his shot off down there quickly, without
drawing contact. He didn't want to go to the line because he didn't fare
well there. And I think those bad habits continue today (although he has
gotten better). The result is, he doesn't attack the basket looking for
contact.
OK. First, I don't buy any kind of blanket idea that he avoids contact. We
had a prime example of that around here about a decade ago with Dee Brown,
who after the knee injury played to his weaknesses with dubious outside
shots vs taking advantage of his ball handling and the amazing leaping
ability he still had inside. (FWIW, I was highly relieved to see no sign of
our current skywalker Kedrick doing the same after the injuries). And you
could see him clearly go out of his way to avoid contact at all
opportunities -driving in for a layup, on the break, wherever.