Seldom-used Rockets swingman K.J. McDaniels started the third quarter of the Jan. 20 home game with instructions to grab Pistons center Andre Drummond, so McDaniels took a foul one second after play started, then again after three more seconds, then again after another two seconds, then again after three more seconds had elapsed, then again without any time running off, a spending spree of five fouls in nine ticks of game time.
On and on it went, the Rockets deploying the strategy in an attempt to erase a nine-point halftime deficit until finally Drummond, notoriously bad from the line, had been intentionally fouled 21 times as part of trying 36 free throws. It was the DH rule coming to the NBA again — designated hacker — more than it was successful in a win for the Pistons by the same nine-point margin, but it was also legal.
The problem for the league, whether to change the rules in attempt to eliminate the ploy that brings even playoff games to a tedious pace or maintain the current approach and force Drummond, Dwight Howard and DeAndre Jordan to improve from the line, had reached new heights that night in Houston. Or lows.
There is a possible solution, though, so possible that the NBA is using the alternative in its own minor league, the same place where other potential rule changes are given a test drive: increase the penalties for an intentional foul away from the ball by awarding a free throw and retaining possession of the ball at any time, not just the final two minutes of the fourth quarter and the final two minutes of overtimes.
In the same Rockets-Pistons scenario under the rule used in the D-League since the start of last season, Detroit would have been given one free throw every time Drummond got tagged, would have been able to choose any player on the court to send to the line, and would have gotten the ball back. It is the same rule as in the NBA, only for the entire game.
One problem with the results of the rule in the D-League. There are no results.
The coaches of the 19 teams so rarely go the way of Hack-a-Shaq that many people around the league have trouble remembering a time the strategy was an issue in a game, even before the new guideline was implemented before 2014-15. There is no way to know whether the stronger rule would make a difference in the NBA because it hasn’t really been tested out in the D-League.
“We don’t have a read, in part because we don’t have enough data to read because it’s not happening very often here,” D-League president Malcolm Turner said. “As a result, I don’t think there’s anything to glean or learn or distill from what’s happening with the rule and its application here for the NBA.”
It’s a work in progress, in other words, and may stay that way because the NBA can’t tell coaches to foul more often, intentionally and away from the ball, in the name of gathering evidence. While the D-League has been used as a laboratory for everything from technical advances to potential changes in the rule book in the majors, this may be the situation that goes unresolved.
“Coaches are adaptive,” Jesse Mermuys, coach of the Raptors 905, the Toronto affiliate, said of the potential impact on the NBA if the rule is implemented. “They’re going to operate within the rules. If they did (use) it, there might be an upheaval right away, but after like the first 20 games people would forget about it and we’d just adapt and start playing.”
NBA commissioner Adam Silver described himself near the end of last season as “on the fence right now” about a change to the Hack-a-Shaq approach. A couple months later, in July, he said the issue was a topic of discussion by the Competition Committee, the group that handles rules related to basketball operations, and among owners at the Board of Governors meeting, without any change.
For one thing, Silver said, TV ratings do not indicate fans are turning away. Beyond that, he said in July, “there is a sense, especially from the basketball people, that it would be sending the wrong message to the larger basketball community, particularly youth basketball, to de emphasize the need for guys to hit free throws. I think also from a competitive standpoint, as I’ve said before, especially in the playoffs, I think 75 percent of the incidents of so called Hack a Shaq were two players, DeAndre Jordan, Dwight Howard, and then the case is should we be changing the rule for two players?”
Scott Howard-Cooper has covered the NBA since 1988. You can e-mail him here and follow him on Twitter.
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