They should surround Josh Smith in a circle and protect him until half court....LOL. Then spread out into a play.
Professional players should practice their free throws more than their 3-pointers. Simple basketball. Also, why not hack-a-Duncan? Also, why not get Smith out of the game much earlier?
Poor free throw shooting will always haunt teams. Even if intentional fouling was taken out of the game, off the ball fouls occur all the time. Howard nudged Duncan too hard late in the fourth and sent him to the line. So then Howard, Smoove, and Dorsey are just gonna get pushed, shoved, and grabbed on screens, loose balls, rebounds, and pretty much any time they touch the ball. That effectively renders our offense 4 on 5 at any given point anyways. How about the Rockets institute a new rule instead? Hit 20 free throws in a row or you don't leave the gym. Miss 3 in a row and you get docked 5% of your salary. That should fix our issues pretty quickly.
If I was smith and little danny green or Duncan kept hacking me, I would literally try to break one of their jaws. The announcers kept saying "pop said he doesn't like doing this, but said it's all about the win" So if we injure kawhi by breaking his jaw right before playoffs does that count as "it's all about the win"
Nope, I'm still calling that a tired excuse. Can't hit your FT the traditional way? Shoot the goddam ball underhanded. “It really is quite perplexing to me as to why someone really doesn’t want to try to shoot that way. Certainly there are a bunch of guys out there that would be much better shooting it that way as opposed to shooting the abysmal percentages that they shoot.” - Rick Barry, career 90% free throw shooter The fix for the loophole is to hit your free throws. Its that simple. If you can't hit 6/10+ from the stripe as a paid professional, you're doing it wrong.
Exactly. Plus, I've witnessed both Howard and Smith hit 12-15 consecutive FTs during the pregame warmups. It's all mental with those two. Dorsey on the other hand..
None of us were complaining when we did it to Dwight when he played for LA........... We are just sore losers.
Here's an alternative. I don't know if it is allowed but we have Josh Smith run into the stands and let them play tag. Maybe the supporters in the stand can form barriers of some sort to shield Smith from his chaser?
What about putting Josh Smith back into the starting lineup? I know it sounds crazy, but teams normally start hacking him towards the end of qtrs, once they're in the penalty. If he was starting and they hacked him, the Rockets would get into the bonus much sooner, than they could sub in T Jones for him. I don't know, maybe I'm grasping at straws but I think it could work.
lol, come on man. The closest thing to Jordan Rules in the NBA was Blake Griffin getting hard fouled every time he went in the lane.
If the league wants to eliminate the hacking strategy they should simply negotiate into the new CBA a rule that states if a player shoots below 60% from the line the previous season or over the course of the previous 3 seasons then they're max contract can only be 75% of what the league max contract is or if they are not a max-level player they are docked 1% of their pay for every 1% they are below 60%. I guarantee you these big guys would become much more efficient from the line.
People are going to use the same strategy for DJ. I wondef if DMo's absence will strangely be most felt at the free throw line since he is probably the bedt of the worst
Why not give the ball to smith and then tell him to launch a three as soon as he's about to get hacked. 3 free throws.
Definitely a rare exception to the rule, who was jUst that much better to overcome the limitation. The smaller the ball relative to hand size, the harder it is to smoothly let roll off your hand. Try shooting FT's with a volleyball sometime, which is only about an inch smaller. The difference in some of these guys' hand sizes is much greater. All the more reason why big guys should be shooting underhanded.
This. It solves everything and it leaves the Hack-A-Who strategy for critical moments of the game. You'd have to save your intentional hacks for key moments, kind of like timeouts or something. I really think that's the best solution, by far. Forget talking about basketball purity or anything -- the NBA is a business and the product of free-throw shooting only is abysmal and unsellable.
I agree is horrible watching bball like this, but i also think you are being paid millons of dollars just to play basket, so u have to at least spend the hours needed at the gym to shoot 60% from the line so teams will just not foul u anymore. This guys are profesionals, yet they dont even work hard on their weaknesses.
I have never seen Pop this desperate for a win, so it is certainly out of character. It goes to show you that he isn't completely comfortable with his team if playoff seeding meant this much to him. Then again, going from 6th to 3rd in the standing in one game was a huge deal and unprecedented. I don't think I've ever seen this in basketball before.
