Brian Shaw now regrets hacking Howard: http://blogs.denverpost.com/nuggets...for-resorting-to-hack-a-howard-strategy/9671/ With Howard showing that he can make the free throws, at least this one time, do you guys think this is the beginning of the end for the Hack-a-Howard strategy? I think he has to prove that he can consistently knock those free throws down, but I think if he hits 70% again during a Hack-a-Howard, it'll be the last time we see it. Also I am wondering if opening up about his mental issues around FTs has perhaps been cathartic for him? Maybe because he has already put that out there in public, he's got nothing else to worry about?
Wha..? One night where hackaDwight didn't work so all the teams are going to quit now? Is this a serious thread?
Yes, they do. Teams intentionally foul to get the ball back in a close game. If a team is trailing by a little bit, then they effectively have no chance of coming back and winning the game if intentional fouls work like you want them to work.
I think he means "No place in a basketball game". Obviously intentionally fouling has applications. Hack-a-Dwight is a legit application. He wants to ban all intentional fouling, which can be resolved by making all fouls that are not making a play for the ball a technical. (However, what about illegal screens? )
My title is a bit provocative, but my real question is how many times Howard has to do this for teams to stop.
Howard is still going to get normal shooting fouls throughout the games. I would say if his FT% is lower than 40% for that game, you try a couple of rounds of Hack-a-Dwight. His problem is mental, so it's a roll of the dice if he's making them or not for that certain night. Don't get your hopes up. Dwight had 8 seasons to work on his FT. There's nothing special that happened tonight other than luck.
Howard shot well tonight. Hopefully the new environment is helping him turn a corner in terms of his FT shooting. The best solution is Howard fixes his FT's and then opposing teams have no options left. While I'm not a fan of hack-a-howard, I'm personally opposed to changing a decades old rule just to accommodate a handful of players. Make your FT's and all this goes away.
Bull****. Then you're just rewarding people with flaws in their skillsets for not fixing their flaws, based on their star power.
its double edge sword really. As long as Howard throw it in, such strategy will only favor us massively.
has hack-a-whoever ever actually directly been the cause of a win? i'm not sure i can recall even when the pacers did it to shaq originally if it ever worked. does it slow a team down and get them out of rhythm? yeah, but i can't say its ever cost a team a win. think about it, a bad ft shooter gets 50%. if a team shot 50% thats a great offense. so if a team is scoring at 50% they hit a 2 on every other possession, that's about 1 point per possession. pretty much what a 50% free throw shooter would get. now i get that this is leaving out the idea of the 3 point play, but most offenses won't hit 50% anyway, and i'm using rough math to make a point that even a bad free throw shooter when made to replace his team's offense in hack-a-player, is still a very good offense. in short, nba coaches should wise up that it has never worked because its flawed logic, and that more times than not the hacked team holds on to win. although as i said i can't remember a time when a hacked team lost. the more important story here is that dwight put in a lot of work on his ft shooting and hopefully can stay around 70%
people will still do it just brian shaw did it wrong you don't send him to the line every time for him to get into rhythm you foul him then let them play for a possession then you foul him again you just have to mix it up
It's still a decent strategy. Dwight missed 3 of his first 4, and 4 of his first 8. Brian Shaw made a very stupid decision to continue to foul him. I don't think I've ever seen any intentional foul situation used that many times. By about the 13th FT, Dwight was in such a good rhythm he was making them all pure. The hack a Dwight is overrated as a major weakness, it's could be good for a few points late, but unless dwight just has a complete disaster it's rarely gonna really hurt us. They can point to the Laker game, but missing our final 4 FGA, and having a major defensve lapse lost that game, not FT's
Howard missed his FTs in that game, but we also had 3 other extremely poor offensive possessions when all we had to do was make one basket.