On the Hack-a-Shaq

I haven't said much, if anything about the NBA on this blog thus far, and there's a reason for that. If it's not already obvious, on the spectrum of professional sports, the NBA is a distant 3rd for me, well behind baseball and football. In the previous few years, it had almost been relegated to a complete afterthought for me. I just didn't see the games as particularly compelling any more. In a way, I was spoiled in this regard, because I grew up watching what is now pretty clearly looked back upon as an extreme "up" period for the league. You had the great Lakers/Celtics rivarly of the late 80s, with the Pistons getting involved in there as well - Magic, Bird, Thomas, etc. And then there was Jordan and his virtuoso performances that led the Bulls to 6 titles in 8 years (angering me all the way as a Bulls hater). The league has just never been able to really recover from the vacuum Jordan created when he left the Bulls for the last time.

However, this year has been different for me. It started with the major offseason moves the Celtics made, adding Kevin Garnett and Ray Allen to their existing All-Star Paul Pierce to create a truly compelling team in an Eastern Conference that had, in many ways become a total afterthought. And then, the uber-competitive West was taken to a new level by a flurry of deals around the trading deadline - Pau Gasol to the Lakers, Shaquille O'Neal to the Suns, Jason Kidd to the Mavericks. The finishing stretch in the West did something I thought was impossible - attract my attention to the game prior to the postseason. And man, was it crazy, with the top 9 teams in the West ending up within 9 games of each other, the top 6 within 3 games.

And now we've come to the playoffs, where it really matters. The marquee series of the first round was supposed to be Spurs v. Suns, as two very high profile rivals clashed once again. The Suns had taken a major risk in bringing in an aging Shaq, and it was thought that this matchup was the big reason for it, so that they would have a strong inside presence to go against Tim Duncan.

Well, unfortunately the matchup to date hasn't panned out as well as observers might have hoped. After losing two winnable games in San Antonio, the Suns were destroyed on their home court last night and now face a 3-0 deficit that no NBA team has ever recovered from. In fact, only 3 of the 90+ teams to go down 0-3 have even managed to force a game 7. Whether it happens 1 game from now or 4, it seems inevitable that the Suns will be bounced from the playoffs, and the Shaq trade denounced as an unmitigated disaster.

All of that brings me to my real topic for today, the so called Hack-A-Shaq technique that the Spurs have employed at several points throughout the series thus far. As has been widely publicized throughout his 16 year career, O'Neal is an absolutely terrible free throw shooter. His career mark stands at a horrific 52.4%, and his seasonal marks include only one year where he managed to hit over 60% from the line, and a number of years where he failed to shoot even 50%. This year, he is right at 50%.

Teams throughout the years have made a point of fouling Shaq and sending him to the line rather than giving him dunks and layups, but at various times coaches have gone as far as to do what Spurs coach Gregg Popovich has done in this series. Typically near the end of a half or the game when O'Neal is on the floor, Spurs players have begun to foul O'Neal off the ball, sending him to the line rather than allowing the Suns to run their offense and get some opportunities. Shaq has been his typical erratic self, shooting just under 50% from the line for the series.

As it has when employed in years past, the tactic has resulted in a significant amount of discussion. It's worth noting that a few years ago, a rule change was made that eliminated this tactic in the last 2 minutes of the game, by punishing these kinds of intentional off the ball fouls with 2 shots and the shooting team keeping the ball.

For my part, I think the controversy surrounding the tactic is crazy, and misses the point to some degree. First of all, let's put a few things into perspective here. If you foul a 50% shooter like this every possession, over time you're effectively giving the other team a point every time down the court, which is the same result as if the team ran their offense and shot 50% from the field on those possessions. And there's always the risk that your target goes on a run (as O'Neal did with a 5-6 stretch in Game 2). So it's not as if this is even close to being a foolproof strategy. Like any tactic, there are risks and rewards. What it does do, most of the time, is prevent a high powered offensive team like the Suns from going any kind of real run to close out a half. Secondly, when you pull this kind of strategy earlier in the game, you're faced with the choice of either getting extra early fouls on key players,or having lesser players on the court just to take fouls. Additionally, it seems odd to me that this sort of tactic would be frowned upon, while intentional fouling strategies are considered to be almost textbook in certain situations. For instance, fouling when you have a foul to give near the end of a quarter to cut down the time an opponent has to run a play, or fouling intentionally at the end of a game when the opponent is down by 3, to send to the line for 2 shots rather than giving them a chance to tie with a 3. And of course, the intentional fouling that is characteristic of any game where it's the only way the trailing team can create enough possessions for themselves to come back.

Let me be honest - I can't stand to watch the Hack-a-Shaq play out, and I'm sure most fans without a rooting interest would say the same thing. It's ugly basketball. However, I think the controversy over the tactic continues to obscure the real issue here, and that being that you've got a 16 year NBA veteran who can't make enough of his free throws to prevent this tactic (which has been employed against him in various forms throughout his entire career) from being a viable option. If Shaq could even hit 60-65% of his free throws (which still isn't very good), teams wouldn't do this. There's just no excuse for this, and there never has been. I'd have to put a little more thought into it before I was sure, but I'm reasonably confident that hitting a free throw is pretty much the easiest thing you can do to score a point in professional sports. You're standing at a consistent distance from the hoop, there's no one guarding you, it's just a matter of sheer repetition. I haven't shot a basketball in months, and I'm not very good even when I have been playing, and I'm fairly certain I could go out right now and hit at least 7 of 10. I'll concede that hitting free throws in a game is different than hitting them in an empty gym, primary due to fatigue and so forth, but it's just not that hard to do.

I've heard the excuses made for Shaq throughout his career: wrist injuries when he was a kid, the size of his hands relative to the ball, etc. None of it makes any sense to me. If Shaq truly wanted to become a respectable free throw shooter, he could have done it years ago. He could find a method that gets the ball in the hoop from the line at least 6 times out of 10. It's just obviously not a priority, and never really has been. That's the choice he makes, and the choice any team that employs him makes in putting him on the floor. Here's hoping the new attention being brought to this matter doesn't result in yet another rule change to further limit the negative consequences of that choice.