Ultimately I think the people arguing against a rule change are just misguided in their reasoning. Nobody is really defending Dwight or Josh Smith for not being able to hit free throws. The point isn't that it's cool that they suck at it, it's that basketball is an entertainment form and the hack-a-strategy RUINS games for fans. It drags them out, makes them boring to watch, takes the excitement of a comeback out, etc. It hurts the game.
I'm fine with being considered holier than thou on this if you consider that expecting people who are at the echelon of their profession to be able to be competent at the basics is unjustified righteousness. I suspect many of us here played organized B-ball at some points and if you did I'm guessing that most of you did free throw drills. I don't see why pro-players who do this as a living aren't improving their ability at this point.
Of course I expect them to be able to hit their free throws. Nobody is proposing a rule change that makes it to where fouling Dwight when he is trying to dunk or a spin move or something is out of the question. Players who can't hit their free throws still get penalized for it. Teams not even being able to inbound the ball, guys running around the court to avoid being hugged, bench players who don't even remember how to unsnap their warmups for lacking of playing time being sent in to hug a guy before the ball is even inbounded...these are not "basketball plays." A rule change that takes that element out is not changing the game of basketball.
It only hurts the game because these players aren't getting better at free throws. Again the answer is hit your damn free throws. Why should rules be changed to mask the weakness of players? I mean if we want to a faster and more exciting game why not make the shot clock even shorter? Move the three point line in? Do away with offensive fouls? There are all sorts of changes that could be made but I do think there are many of us who actually appreciate seeing excellence in all aspects of a sport.
Those are basketball plays and the penalty is a foul and getting to shoot free throws already. It only works again because some players can't hit a free throw. Once again the answer already exists without having to change the rules.
I agree. I want to start demanding all players be excellent at all aspects of basketball, otherwise we should slow the game down and hurt the aesthetics of it in order to make fun of them and teach them a lesson. Proposed rule change: When fouled off the ball, a player is forced to do that which he is worst at on the court in order to score 2 points. Dwight Howard has to shoot free throws and Chris Paul has to do standing dunks from under the basket.
This is such a hokey and dumb response. Go back to the cornfields with this kind of homespun nonsense. This isn't a Mankato community board meeting. Nobody is changing rules to mask weakness. Rules are beign changed to prevent exploitations/loopholes which causes horrible, unwatchable basketball that nobody enjoys watching. This exploit/loophole has proliferated to the point where it needs to be addressed again. This same rule was changed 50 years ago to prevent this exact situation in the last 2 minutes. Not to "mask weakness" of Wilt Chamberlain, but to prevent the game from descending into an unwatchable farce. Now the same situation has grown to envelope a situation outside the last 2 minutes - time to change the rules again.
In your "organized basketball games" that you play in, do you hug guys before the ball is in play to make them shoot free throws?
Even better - the fouling team should designate an inactive/injured player in street clothes to come off the bench. THis will have the effect of discouraging PHYSICAL weakness, and think of all of the fun tactical moves that will be made in terms of keeping guys on the bench not dressed for games. Imagine Russ Westbrook in one of his flashy button downs and Capri Pants and Loafers, being picked up off the bench, bricking an FT, then following it up with a tremendous putback, adjusting his glasses, and sauntering back to the bench at the next dead ball
It's brilliant! I think Rocketsjudoka has really gotten us on to something here. Excellence at all aspects of the game should be required and we should find new ways to slow the game down with "strategy" to punish those players who aren't perfect at everything! Why can't JJ Barea dunk! Why can't Blake Griffin hit mid range jumpers! Why can't Tim Duncan hit threes! Why can't Trevor Ariza dribble!
No, players should be excellent at all aspects of their spots. You either hit a homerun or you're out.
Define "basketball play". How is fouling a guy that's standing there and doing nothing 80 feet away from the basket any more a "basketball play" if he's holding the ball than if he's not? The player that's doing the fouling doesn't particularly care about the ball at that point.
Define how a guy holding a basketball is making more of a basketball play than a guy not holding a basketball? This is not difficult to discern. The NBA figured this out 50 years ago.
So if a player punches a guy holding a basketball, it's more of a basketball play than if a player punches a guy not holding a basketball? If that was the case, this thread wouldn't exist.
I think this argument is threadbare. I realize I probably can't change your mind, but I've been hearing a lot of people on radio who keep saying this. Invariably, the person either didn't play basketball at that level, or they are someone like Jerry West, for whom free throws were trivial. I, however, after playing for two decades and watching four decades of NBA ball, am completely convinced that if someone like Dwert practiced a near infinity of time, he would not raise his % so much. (Someone like Josh Smith, who can hit 3-pointers, is clearly another matter.) It was either in this thread or another hack-a thread that I went back to the very beginning of the league demonstrating that we've always had crappy, very crappy free throw shooters. There are literally always going to be certain big guys who are not going to be very good at a 15-foot shot. Period. Some big guys can't dribble in traffic very well. They are too tall and not quite coordinated enough to have great handles. At no point in the game is there a way that the other team can FORCE them to bring the ball up the floor. Yes, if in the flow of the game you pass it to that guy at half court, well, that's a risk and his dribbling problems will hurt the team. *Well just practice your damned dribbling, even if you're 7 feet tall.* Some short guys can't post up or finish well in tall traffic. The other team cannot force you to make your worst post player to post up and shoot jump hooks (though that might be amusing). *Well just practice your damned jump hooks over people twice your height.* Free throws should be similar. If he gets fouled in a normal play, his lack of skill can hurt his team. It's ridiculous that in this one skill, and in this one skill only, the other team can force you to stop everything to make the one player display that skill (or lack thereof). You or I can probably make free throws all day long, but some people honestly don't have the same eye-hand coordination for this specific task, even though they can jump out of the gym and shoot okay from 5 feet or so.
The NBA is in the entertainment business, and there's no debate about free throws being exponentially more boring than actual gameplay. The hack-a strategy should be gotten rid of just for this reason.
Forget the argument on what skills a player should have. The fundamental problem is the defense is choosing who gets to score, regardless of the situation.
Sure why not? At least marginally. I have no problem saying somebody holding a basketball is by definition more related to basketball. It's irrelevant of course, because punching a guy is by definition a non-basketball play and subject to a technical foul and immediate ejection/suspension from basketball. That was the case and is the case, which is what the league effectively deemed non-basketball plays are punished severely in the last two minutes of games. The biggest problem with your line of argument is that all of you junior NBA SOLICITOR GENERALS are living out your paper chase fantasies in a way that really doesn't necessitate it. There is absolutely no requirement that the rules in basketball operate with absolute consistency across all contexts - Sometimes baskets count for 2 points, sometimes they count for 3 points! Sometimes you can lean on a guy in the post fighting for position, but you bear hug a ball handler on the perimeter and you are a FOULER. Clear path fouls, intentional fouls in the last 2 minute....it's all RIDDLED with logicall contradictions, where the exact same action by the transgressor merits a different punishment. Except the NBA rulebook isn't a set of Rules that underpins a grand philosophical principle - short of that to make money by getting poeple to watch groups of men try to put a ball through a ring. Explicitly arriving at a Platonic forms definition of "a basketball play" is not really a prerequisite to this endeavor. The rules are deliberately inconsistent to facilitate a better (and by better, they mean more enjoyable for participants and viewers) basketball game, and violations of the rules are punished with penalties for transgressors. In this instance, deliberate rule violations are being committed that 1) inure to the benefit of the transgressor and, far more importantly, 2) MAKE IT LESS ENJOYABLE TO WATCH AND PLAY. Some dumb paean to "consistency" that the NBA rulebook has never enforced, contemplated, and is not subject to is not relevant to the case against the Hack-a.
