Bballholic, your rebounding and dribbling analogies are not really comparable to the Hack-a-whomever situation. There is no way to specifically and consistently single out one player and make him do something he is terrible at EVERY SINGLE possession. There is no way to force Javale McGee to play PG and be the primary ball handler every possession. There is no way to force Isaiah Thomas to try to grab every rebound for the Celtics. You can't make DeAndre Jordan shoot three-pointers every time down the floor. Dwight is already penalized for his poor free throw shooting due to the fact he becomes an unreliable offensive option once you're in the penalty. You can't give him the ball in a close game because most likely, the other team is going to take advantage of his skill deficiency and make him shoot free throws. There's nothing wrong with that. That's the way it should be. But grabbing him in the backcourt when he is not involved with the play? That has nothing to do with basketball skills. That is taking advantage of a loophole in the rules.
Once again, you're putting things in my posts that aren't there. I never said I was in favor of maintaining "status quo". As a matter of fact I'm not in favor of maintaining status quo. I want hack-a stopped. I hate watching it. What I said very clearly is if we aren't going to allow hack-a strategies by changing the rules, then to accompany those changes we shouldn't allow guys that are 40% FT shooters to not be disadvantaged by that. 40% free throw shooting hurts the game. The reason why we have guys shooting 40% from the line now is because we haven't done anything about it and we have favored them defensively. Shooting is a skill. And FT shooting is a fundamental skill. It's basketball 101. And if we don't fix the poor FT shooting that is coming into the league with guys like Drummond and DeAndre lowering the standards even further, then in a few years we're going to be looking at even more poor FT shooters. And they'll be clanking up misses when we foul them while they're shooting. And we'll be fouling shooters all over the place, tackling them out there to send them to the line instead of letting them shoot a 50% shot. Something has to be done about guys in this league making millions of dollars and they can't even hit one of of two from the line. After all......they are the cause of the hack-a strategy, not the rules, and not the opposing coach that instructs their team to employ the hack-a strategy. The hack-a strategy exists because the NBA is running guys out there that can't hit 4 out of 10 from the FT line. The difference between basketball and football has to be pointed out here. Basketball has a hundred or more scoring plays a game. Football, if they're lucky might get 10 scoring plays a game. Huge difference. Soccer is even more of a disparity. So it's really not a fair comparison. And shooting free throws is a scoring play. How many times does a football team or a soccer team "decline a penalty" that takes points off the scoreboard??? Not very often. Basketball is a different game with scoring plays going back and forth all the time. And free throw shooting is a critical component of scoring. It makes up a substantial part of the scoring. People in this NBA complain about Harden drawing fouls and going to the line. What's next? They gonna deny Harden initiating contact and getting to the FT line for a possessions that yield 1.7 points or more for him. You gonna say that that's too much efficiency for Harden. He has to be stopped. He should only be allowed 2 free throws every other trip to the line because he gets to the line too much??? Should the officials quit calling fouls against Harden's defender because Harden is trying to get that whistle by creating contact??? And after all we don't want to see a bunch of free throws?? Like watching a guy making a bunch of free throws is more pleasant to the eye than watching a guy miss a bunch of free throws???? Here's the bottom line: When I watch DeAndre nad Drummond play, I root for them to get fouled and sent to the foul line. Because I like to be entertained. And I'm very entertained by their free throw ineptitude. It makes me laugh that these supposed professional athletes refuse to spend the time to become efficient free throw shooters. In that game against the Spurs Friday night, Jeff Van Gundy also properly stated that there are all the possible tools available that NO PLAYER should ever finish their career without becoming a much, much better player than when they started their career. Then in the next breath he's griping about the hack-a strategy and wanting it eliminated. Van Gundy is right. All the tools are available for any NBA player to become at least, at least, a 50% FT shooter. That is if they actually use the tools that are available to them. That is if they actually care. The hack-a strategy is a strategy because there are players in this league that simply don't care. They just want to dominate with their size and athleticism. Those guys simply don't love the game. They don't appreciate it. They don't respect the game for what it is. They refuse to use the tools that are available to them to become acceptable free throw shooters to the degree where the hack-a strategy is basically defunct. Any basketball purist understands what I'm saying here. You undermine the integrity of the game when you change rules that make the game more aesthetically pleasing for the viewers but cover up for player skill deficiencies. 40% FT shooters undermine the integrity of the game. They shouldn't be advantaged by being able to play and avoid going to the FT line. So if you're not going to allow them to be put on the FT line then don't allow them to play. Making guys sit on the bench when their team is in the bonus is no different than making guys sit when they commit 6 fouls. It's a limit. And there's a reason for the limit. We don't want to see guys out there just fouling all the time and stopping the action at will. So they only get 6. We don't want to see guys clanking free throws all the time so they only get to play inside 2 minutes and when their team is not in the bonus. The problem is there are guys in the NBA who can't shoot free throws as well as my daughter in 9th grade can shoot them. That's insane. And it should be fixed.
Can't do that in basketball either. There is before the bonus and there is the 2 minutes and there is a 6 foul limit. Neither can you force Javale to the FT line every play. Only when they're in the bonus and Javale is in the game and you don't have 6 fouls can you force Javale to the FT line. Here's some things you can do though. You can take a bad iso defender matchup and exploit every possession that poor iso defender is in the game. And you can even run a play that requires a switch so that that poor iso player has to defend against a great iso offensive player. You know what happens next when that scenario unfolds????? The opposing team takes the bad iso defender out of the game and replaces them with a better defender. Harden doesn't get penalized for going to the FT line 10 times in a game, does he? But yet we hear cascades of boos when he goes to the line that many times when we're playing the road. Every other team's fans in the league want Harden to not be allowed to go to the FT line as much. They want him limited. They want to take away the foul call when Harden initiates any contact. All 29 other teams want that. And their fans will tell you that our games are horrible to watch because of Harden going to the FT line all the time. Even the national media is on that one, complaining all the time on ESPN about Harden not really being great, that he's just exploiting the rules. It's the same complaint as the hack-a strategy. Should we change the rules because the rest of the NBA doesn't want to see a Harden parade to the FT line. I mean... come one now....Harden has shot more free throws than DeAndre and Drummond have. When a player is one of the 5 players on the court he's involved in the play. You can't use "not involved in the play" as an excuse not to call a penalty. You could make a case of "not involved in the play" on approximately a third of all foul calls in the NBA. Patience, Free Throw Shooting is Basketball 101. Free Throw shooting should be something the defense doesn't want to happen because it's too efficient of a possession. IF you want to see great basketball then make the free throw shooters so good that the defense doesn't want them going to the line. Once again, I'm not advocating not doing anything. Here's what I would do if I was on the rules committee: 1. Make the last 2 minutes the last 4 or 5 minutes. 2. Add an extra free throw for any fouls committed after 8 in a quarter. Not the old 3 to make 2 rule. But an extra free throw. Teams should have an extra penalty for excessive fouling. 3. No player that is below 50% from the FT line and has shot 50 free throws or more during the regular season is allowed to play when his team is in the bonus until the 2 minute mark. Something along these lines. You can changes around the minute mark in #1 a little bit and the foul count in #2 either up or down slightly and move the FT% up or down a little in #3. But combining these 3 measures assures an aesthetically pleasing game while not advantaging a team with a poor free throw shooter or advantaging a team that wants to employ hack-a all the time. It's a neutral strategy that fixes the problem and pushes poor free throw shooters to get better or have to sit at designated points in the season and in the game.
So, you're not for changing the rules. Your idea to fix it is to improve FT shooting? Man, that's a freaking ton of paragraphs it took for you to say two simple things.
Weird how people are wired now to find further loopholes upon loopholes. Well, another workaround on that would be that the refs advance the ball to the point of the foul that was declined. Once you are inbounding at the opponents side of the court, it becomes more dangerous to have a guy devoted to fouling. The defense would not want you to advance the ball to the spot of the infraction. It opens up much more deadly plays. Further, an inbounds from the opponents side of the court would force the opp to cover your center with there's. If that's a good center, he won't want to take too many fouls, giving you the option to not decline and take the PF and FTs. make sense....advance the ball.
I'm not trying to put words in your mouth. Just saying all those paragraphs are making it hard to figure out what you are trying to say. Forgive my attempt at paraphrasing. Besides, saying we need to improve the FT on the court is not such a bad thing to deny? You wouldn't be the only one. Seems like you might be trying really hard to put forth a profoundly unique position. Can you make your point in one paragraph?
I already did. The rest was explanation, trying to spell it out real clear so other readers wouldn't misunderstand my stance, and justification for my stance for the good of the game.
Me too. <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Kevin Durant (<a href="https://twitter.com/KDTrey5">@KDTrey5</a>) on Hack-a-Shaq: 'Work on your f***ing free throws' <a href="https://t.co/z6CHNntfaD">https://t.co/z6CHNntfaD</a> <a href="https://t.co/U5CEqjwzal">pic.twitter.com/U5CEqjwzal</a></p>— Dime Magazine (@DimeMag) <a href="https://twitter.com/DimeMag/status/679344055675838464">December 22, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
This seems like the best fix, IMO. Basically, the basketball version of the football "declining the penalty." It's not identical, since you're not actually turning it down--the foul still counts against the player and team--but in spirit, it's similar, as you're turning down the supposed "reward" of free throws to simply retain possession, which you already had.
crazy idea: if you make your first free throw, it counts as 2 points and you dont shoot a second free throw. if you miss the first you get to shoot a second one for 1 point. its win win because there are less free throws and also the bad free throw shooters point per foul is increased artificially without feeling amateur like giving 3 tries to make 2. if you make 50% of your free throws you would have expected value of 1.5 points per trip, which is a win for any team.
Why anyone would want anything more than this baffles me. The object is to fix an unintended consequence, not to restore balance to a bad rule. I can't think of any way that the offense or defense could take advantage of this rule, except of course if a bad percentage free throw shooter always chooses to take it out of bounds. Even then, that is not that big of a deal.
My suggested tweak to "decline the penalty" is a question about where the ball is inbound. I believe the ball should be inbound at the point of foul. That way, the defense must stop fouling, or the offense simply moves the ball down to very dangerous inbounding position.
So guys like Andre Drummond, De Andre Jordan, heck even Rondo now have no incentive to make their fts, a fundamental skill in basketball like dribbling, passing, rebounding and shooting. You're doing all these guys a favor, and I think it's a disgrace "professional NBA players" can't even hit fts at 50%. What about the guys who can't pass? Who can't defend? Who can't rebound? Every NBA player has different weaknesses, why are you giving preferential treatment to players with weak ft shooting but not doing anything for other guys with different weaknesses? Anyway I think people have very set stances on the policy right now, it all depends on the league what they want since whatever they choose a segment of the population will hate it.
they have incentive to shoot better free throws when they get fouled on ball or fouled while shooting. why should the other team be able to make them shoot when they dont even have the ball? there is no loophole in the rules where you can make the other teams worst defender play 1 on 1 defense or force their worst rebounder to play center or anything like that so this comparison is very faulty
Sure they do. Missing free throws hurts them and the team and free throws occur during the entire game, not just during hack-a-gump periods.
Not really. Players who shoot fts the worst take the least amount of fts so they usually don't get punished for bad ft shooting. For example Jordan takes like 6-8 shots a night he doesn't really get punished for his poor ft shooting.
