[ESPN] Stern: Hack-a-Shaq, clock issues to be reviewed

Yes I am ok with it, the guy needs to learn how to shoot Free throws.....

If he doesn't then he needs to sit his big butt down.

DD

 

Just as wack as intentionally walking a person
maybe good tactic . . but it is just wack

Rocket River

 

ok you know i actually agree, its lame. but its not the lamest thing that goes on in an nba game. i have no problem with the nba finding a way to prohibit hack-a-shaq, IF they also address all the other lame stuff that goes on. but if they're just prohibiting this one thing, when a bunch of other things go on in a game that don't really have anything to with basketball in its purest form, then its just favoritism.

things that have less to do with basketball than forcing players to make free throws, in my opinion:

1. calling fouls that having nothing to do with the play (this would include intentional fouls but is much broader: all those lame fouls that get called even when they wouldn't have affected the outcome of a possesion; i.e. scola's offensive foul negating bjax's 3....)
2. 3 second violations: offensive and defensive; don't tell me when james naismith invented basketball he thought that camping in the lane should be against the rules because it was unfair
3. i actually would rather see a prohibition on fouls of dunk attempts before a prohibition of hack-a-shaq. without any sarcasm, i hate that players can erase highlights caused by their own bad defense and simultaneously put the jumping player in harm's way. those midair fouls are dangerous and no matter how clean you try to get there's a risk someone's gonna land weird.

it just irks me that stern thinks clock issues and hack-a-shaq are more pressing than a plethora of other flaws in the nba.

 

which makes it weird that everyone is b****ing so much. i mean i know everyone hates everything stern does, and i'm not even sure i like taking away hack-a-shaq, but damn there has been some overreaction. on the one hand, if a player just makes their ft's, it's a bad strategy and goes away. on the other, you already can't foul off the ball in the final 2 minutes of a game (that's why everyone chases the guy with the ball and 90% ft shooters get fouled) so it's really just an extension of a concept, not something new.

and while it's true that guys should be able to hit their ft's, i don't see anything wrong with requiring that the guy who is fouled has the ball (or is making some aggressive off the ball move like running around a pick). if a guy can't shoot ft's and his own team takes the appropriate action of essentially removing him from their offense, why should you be able to make him the focal point of the offense by fouling off the ball? if shaq catches it in the post, foul away before he does anything. but i don't see eliminating intentional off the ball fouls as horrible (and why that makes him a dictator i'm really not sure).

as for saying he should fix the ref situation, these are suggestions to the competition committee about rules changes. what are they going to do, pass a rule saying we should try to hire the best refs possible? this isn't really their area.


and i really would like to do something about flopping. i think stern said during some playoff game that it was brought up last year so hopefully it is again. the problem is that it seems the cure is sometimes worse than the disease. finding a policy that is forceful and works and yet has the flexibility and judgment needed to not punish someone who really wasn't trying to do anything bad, is hard to accomplish. making the refs call it in game would almost be impossible as they already can't tell the difference and no human being watching 10 people at a time will probably ever be able to accurately tell. you don't want someone getting a technical when they really were knocked down.

some sort of post-game review might be the way to go and would have to only be for true flops. like not being touched and flailing or that move kirilenko did where he grabbed tmac's arm, pulled it into himself, and then snapped his head. would be able to punish someone who actually was fouled but just exaggerated? what about the last cavs/celtics game where lebron got lightly bumped by posey near out of bounds. it was a foul, but lebron didn't need to jump out like he did. but what if he doesn't jump like that and his strength allows him to only slightly lose his balance, and then there's no call and he turns it over? so do you flop and make sure you get the call or possibly turn it over and hurt your team? damned if you do, damned if you don't.

so while i would love to see a good flopping policy, it would have to be done right, and that will be hard to accomplish.

 

all in all, no one likes to see a hack-a-shaq. but it's the last thing for now the leaue should worry about.

 

The clock issue can be resolved with simple common sense, though that's not a David Stern point of expertise. I assume the Hack-a-Shaq thing will be eliminated where if an intentional is placed off the ball the player gets a FT and the ball back no matter how much time is on the clock.

What Stern really needs to address is BS like this

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But Goddell is making all the right moves and addressing the right situations. YES, he inherited a gold mine, but he's done a great job with it this far. But again, I don't understand how your liking of Stern refutes the fact that he's consistently done the WRONG things going back 10 years. I'm not saying Stern hasn't had positive impact on the NBA; I'm saying that his impact is over and he needs to step down in favor of someone who will be able to keep improving the league.

No, he's not. Not at all. And he didn't just get Jordan. He got the crop of the greatest players to ever play the game. Magic, Bird, Drexler, Olajuwon, Ewing, Zeke. Every team had a superstar. Every team had a hall-of-famer.

And RR, the NBA USED to have a great balance. But Stern's actions with the SONICS have proved the NBA is about OWNERS. The worst part of all is that that balanced shifted AWAY FROM FANS.

JEEZ, do I miss my a/c.

 

The reason to kill hack-a-Shaq is that the NBA is in the entertainment business. If their product is not entertaining, they will have a problem. And having no flow to the game creates a non-entertaining product.

There are plenty of ways to eliminate it: allow teams the option to take 1 free throw plus the ball on ALL intentional fouls away from the ball (whether in the last two minutes or not). Or allow teams to choose to take the ball out of bounds or take the free throws. If Phoenix kept taking the ball, eventually San Antonio would have to stop doing it or foul out all of their players since it wouldn't be getting them possession back.

 

completely agree, maybe coaches are taking the high ground morally and not returning the favour on Duncan... sort of surprised Pop hasn't started Hack-a-Chandler yet

 

Good post. I will go one step further and say let's figure out which teams lately are run by people who are anti-flopping. It might or might not be the Rockets, but the teams who represent those against the practice should be recognized, because of or despite their success.

Scola and Battier can't be counted as offenders bc they hustle to even national liking. And at least Mutombo believes that no man could possibly get the better of him.... which is true. He's like old Marlon Brando but without the fat and lazy.

 

It's not a cop out at all - the nature of the game - and by that I mean every single play of every game played - would change dramatically if we implemented your proposal of "no fouls on dunks or layups" rule. It would change the nature of the game in a profound way, which may not be positive

The if we implement the banning of the hack a shaq/wallace/bowen/wilt - only a very small fraction of games even feature this. Unfortunately for the NBA they tend to be high-profile, high stakes games that a lot of people watch. While those games would be affected, the vast majority woudl not. And those game sthat would be affected would be affected in a largely positive way from a viewership standpoint

You're wasting a lot of text with the "well it's shaq's fault he should make his free throws" Sure - it's his fault. But I don't really care, so what? Can't I just turn around and say - it's the hack-a-shaq teams fault because they are too lazy to play defense? Fault is inconsequential here and not my concern. I'd rather see the game be improved rather than see fault/blame be assesed - no need for some sunday school morality play about FT shooting - delivered by schoolmarmy couchbound wannabe sages (see DaDakota's post above).

I mean - if that were our objective, to mete out lessons, we should just change the rules allow the hack-a-shaq to exist even in the last 2 minutes right (which was created for wilt because it was killing games and turning them into a ridiculous spectacle)?

The worst thing is that nobody even LIKES the rule. Players don't like it. COaches don't like it. Fans don't like it - here's Pat Riley after going Hack-a-Ben

If nobody wants to do it, and it's part of the game so they have to do it, then just make it NOT part of the game. Easy peasy - it's not a fundamental change like putting in a 3rd basketball hoop or allowing players to jump on trampolines.

 

If it doesn't affect 99% of the game, then why make a rule to benefit ONE player?

 

well how exactly will a 'no fouls on dunks' rule fundamentally change the "nature of the game," if the nature of the game is "every single play of every game played," when players aren't getting dunks and layups every single play? players only have the opportunity for that after they've beaten their man; breakaways occur maybe a handful of times a game. that is the purest nature of basketball there is: beating your opponent with superior play.

once you approve of a foul as a means of erasing your opponent's superior play, then you have accepted fouling as a component of the game. once you've accepted that, is it such an incredible extrapolation to get to hack-a-shaq? the fundamental difference you're talking about is a little artificial, like i said. its just the physical distance on the court that makes one foul less palatable visually; in both cases its a team fouling to defensive purposes.

but i digress. you're right that fault doesn't matter. i don't think the nba should be serving up moral lessons with its regulations and im sorry if that's how it sounded when i chastised shaq's inability to take advantage of free throws. i'm not adamant that hack-a-shaq stick around as a punishment to shaq. there are just much bigger problems to solve that take away from the entertainment value of basketball that singling out hack-a-shaq is incredibly puzzling. like you said, hack-a-whoever happens only a fraction of the time. wouldn't the nba be better served addressing things that happen every single game?

 

The better question is why have a loophole that hurts a small group of players and creates ugly basketball that nobody - not players, not coaches, not fans - wants to see?

Do you propose that we go back to the pre-Wilt days, where you could do this all the time?

Well first off, I don't understand what your rule even means - but yes, no fouls on shots in close would create an incentive for all shots to be close and eliminate outside shooting - that woudl significantly impact the game, a lot more so than eliminating hack-a-wilt/shaq/bowen etc.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here? All I know is that there are all sorts of variations for foul rules that are designed to encourage and discourage certain types of play (i.e. the no charging circle).

You are right that there are definitely bigger problesm, but I don't see why clearing up a small one can't be taken care of in the mean time. I mean all it takes is to hold a vote on it....and voila, it's gone.

 

If Shaq made his free throws, there would be no hack-a-Shaq. I just can't believe they're not going to address the flop-a-flop.

 

First, I don't see how it create that much of ugly basketball if it, as you said, affects less than 1% of the game. There are more serious problems need to be fixed than this little annoyance.

Second, If any coach says that he doesn't like it, but still uses it, then he's a hypocrite. What does he mean by "don't like it" when he tries to win ball games with it?

Third, it seems arbitrary to say that it is a "loophole" that hurts a small group of players. Every rule "hurts" a small group of players. It hurts the players because they are not skilled in a fundamental element of the game. Should we eliminate the "loophole" that hurt players like Rafer Alston who can't make a teardrop shot by not allowing taller players to challenge their shots in the paint? Isn't it boring basketball these guys keep bricking their runners.

Comes to think of it, we do have a rule in our church coop league that boys are not allowed to block girls' shots. Maybe they should do that in the NBA too. Disallow physical players to block soft players just so to level the playing field.

 

no one likes to see hack-a-shaq all game long. but it can't possibly be an all-game-long thing.

i really don't see this as a big deal. definitely not like what some have said that it's hurting the game.

should baseball ban intentional walk as well?

what hurts the game more is players like shaq, ben wallace, etc. who can't hit ft's.

 

League average for free throw shooting has been about the same each year for 40 years. Players as a whole havent all of a sudden gotten "worse", its that they havent gotten much better. Which is strange because 3 point shooting has improved tremendously from when the the 3 point shot was first added.

League could do something like if a player is fouled more than 4 times in a quarter or 11 times in a game, you can substitute in another free throw shooter in his place...

Or a "foul cap", after the 35th foul in a game the other team can select its own free throw shooter...

Hacking the end of games is still going to be done when a team's behind. A good free throw shooter can Nick Anderson a game away once in a while.


Also more than Hack a Shaq, I DO NOT LIKE the difference in types of fouls called or allowed between those on the perimeter and play in the paint. Players can mug and grapple with each other in the paint but guards can't be touched....or how it leads to the grey area of guards driving into the lane but guards getting easier calls (like Dwyane Wade), but a "big man" going up needs to be all strong and powerful and accept no-harm no foul simply because his position is "power forward" or center. They need to be clear on WHAT they call fouls in the first place.

 

how about this idea:

Have a HEAD REFEREE at the scorers table who is watching the game from a monitor, who can within 10 seconds, review a play in slow motion and whatnot to get the correct call. No more "well the other player was blocking my view so I didnt see him flop" BS! The main excuse they use is it will hurt the TEMPO of the game, but the media equipment we have today, we can show a replay within a couple of seconds so I don't see the big deal.

 

Good post. There are already rules in place to discourage excessive fouling. The penalty, the fouling out rules, just to name a couple. It gets the league's attention only because it is Shaq. If it's just some scrub, you think Stern would take it so seriously?