I disagree with your analogy as the pitcher simply plunking someone in the dug out would be equivalent to the Spurs walking up to Dorsey while he's sitting on the bench and forcing him to the free throw line. As a fan, your issue would be paying someone like Dwight max dollars, allowing him to be a focal point of your team, and then having all that taken away because he can't hit FTs to stay in the game. Similarly, it would be like spending a third of the Astros' payroll on getting Barry Bonds, and then having every pitcher just walk him the entire season. Again, I feel this is appropriate because I disagree intentional walks were within the spirit of the game when baseball was first invented. As a Rockets fan, I'm not really "winning" this debate anymore than you are because this directly affects our franchise' chance of winning, especially when a third of your players can't be trusted to stay on the floor. I only find it troubling that no one from the anti-hack-a group wants to admit there exist other factors aside from simply banning intentional off-ball fouls and paint extremely exaggerated examples to prove their points.
They should at least tweak the rule to where you cannot intentionally foul behind the ball. I don't think it's fair when a team rebounds and starts a fast break, but it is stopped because of the hack in the back court.
There's no comprehensive "ratings study" that indicates whether hack-a is good or bad for ratings, there's simply not enough data to filter out the noise. Silver is saying "yeah, well ratings are up generally, so screw it" This might be correct, but ratings would arguably be even higher if universally despised hack fests were less common.
Yeah, I would even go for "must be on the same side of the half-court line" or something. I just especially hate the inbounds at one end, and someone jumping on DJ or Dwight on the other end of the court. It's all academic anyway. Hopefully coaches avoid it for the most part. And really, the boring part could be the vast gap between the haves and the have nots this coming year. It seems like most of the bad teams got worse and a bunch of good teams should be better.
Here's how I look at it: 1) basketball is a sport 2) sports is NOT real life 3) sports IS entertainment 4) entertainment should be entertaining i.e. end this strategy and lets get back to the game.
This logic is so weird. So they should install a rule that would 1. force bad ball handlers to bring the ball up court as the opponent chose, because if they didn't have this rule, young kids would think that practicing dribbling was not important. 2. force bad jump shooters to shoot as the opponent chose, because if they didn't have this rule, young kids would think that practicing jump shooting was not important. 3. etc. ... you get the drift. The game of basketball would be a game of HORSE. So every young kid would practice every facet of the game diligently because if they didn't they would be forced to be embarrassed to do their weakest skill on every possession of the game.
The notion that fouling a guy by touching him while he's not making a basketball play(rebounding, going for a dunk, touching the ball, posting up, setting a screen, etc) is a basketball play is laughable. Just because the NBA says so, doesn't make it so. As for the intentional walk baseball comparison used earlier, a team can only use it on a player once on a certain hitter in a span of a team's 9 plate appearances. Right now, there's no limit to how many hack-a's a team can use on a player as long as they fall before the last two minutes of the 4th quarter. Plus, the rest of the team gets a chance to drive in the player receiving the intentional walk. In this case, the rest of the team might as well not even bother participating until the hack-a is finished. Finally, nobody in favor of abolishing the hack-a is saying that teams shouldn't foul poor free throw shooters. But there's a big difference between going for a block and fouling DeAndre Jordan to stop him from flushing an alleyoop and touching him when he's on the other end of the court. One is a legal way to take advantage of his poor free throw shooting. The other should be considered two shots and the ball.
Updated article regarding Silver's take: http://espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/1...-says-hack-player-strategy-not-likely-go-away It's interesting he's even mentioning hearing from thousands of coaches around the world on keeping the rule. I'd like to see some sort of official survey done by the NBA to measure exactly what percentage of HS, college, and professional coaches are pro or anti hack-a.
these guys are getting paid millions...if they cant shoot FTs, they continue to hurt their own teams and are the primary/most culpable causes for a slow game.
Yeah, creating a new rule to prevent this would be a classic case of treating the symptom and not the cause.
Harden, Ariza, Thornton, Lawson and Terry at the end of games when we can get away with it would be 1 remedy for Free throw woes in my opinion. Obviously Howard will obviously be 1 of the players on the court until we're able to replace him. So hopefully, our free throw shooting to close out games will not be a detriment as much as it was last year...we shall see
So, should we make the 3pt line closer to the basket because it's not fair that Steph Curry can hit all those threes and most of the league can't? Learn to shoot thress. Same with this Hack-a-whoever thing.
Holding IS rewarded in football if it's done strategically - same as in the NBA. If a WR is about to blow past a defender, you grab and hold and lose 5 yards instead of giving up a TD or a big play. Similarly, it happens in basketball all the time with fouls on fast breaks or intentional fouls at the end of games. Acting like fouling in general is not a strategy is silly. The foul in basketball is still penalized with 2 free throws. It's up to the other team to capitalize on it. JVG's position is basically that he wishes teams would make it so bad for the game by doing every possession that it would have to be changed. Fair position - the problem for him is that if it helped them win games, teams would do it. But teams are NOT choosing to strategically do that because overusing it is not really beneficial - you get your guys in foul trouble and you put yourself in the bonus really quickly so when the Clippers take Jordan out of the game, they have an early advantage in that every foul gives them free throws. For all the griping, Jordan - the posterchild for this strategy - is averaging 8 FTs a game, or 4 intentional fouls if you assume ALL his free throws are from Hack-A-Jordans. It's just not that disruptive. Looking at the gamelogs, it appears to have been done excessively 3 times this season (SAS, POR, DEN when he shot 20+ FTs each) and the Clippers have won 2 of those 3 games. This is sort of like the Icing-the-Kicker in the NFL that wastes a few minutes with kicks. It doesn't really work as well as people thought and after a few years of the fad, it faded away and is only used occasionally now. That's how the Hack-A is used too - a few teams will successfully exploit it, and more power to them for seeing a weakness in the other team and using it. But for the most part, it's not used much and it's just not causing major problems for the NBA. They met about it and reaffirmed that view just this past year.
anyone see how Festus Ezeli got fouled off the ball by the bucks last night with 30 sec remaining? The refs sent Festus to the line.... lololol.
Well, that's the best argument against the no-change position which says "You don't want to award lack of skill" by saying "Well, he fouling a skill?" I've been on the side who says that fouling can be a tactic of clock management, and don't change that, even outside the discussion Hack-a-Shaq. But when JVG puts it that way "is fouling a skill" makes me wonder is Basketball the only sport where fouling has strategic advantages....and again, I'm not even talking about Hack-a-Shaq. I'm talking about fouling to get the ball back. What other sports have an advantage for fouling? Should we just severely punish all off-the-ball fouls like occurs in the last 2-minutes. Fouling the ball-handler will just have to remain, unless we want to expect refs to make a judgement call of intentionality. JVG is talking about off-the-ball fouls ... extending the 2-minutes to the whole game for fouling someone without the ball.
If you get fouled off the ball, you go to the line. And even if you aren't in the bonus, the second foul and beyond in under two minutes is a trip to the line. What's your point?
JVG said what I've been saying since the whole debate erupted: Fouling should not be rewarded. I would also add: Not even attempting to play defense should not be rewarded.
