NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has recently stated that the league will be discussing what to do about the "hack-a" tactic this summer. This is my contribution to that discussion. Many possible fixes have already been suggested by fans and sportswriters, but they all suffer from one or both of the following problems:
1. They require referees to judge intent.
Many seem to believe that it will be easy for referees to flag cases of intentional fouling, but they underestimate the inventiveness of players and coaches. In the embedded video, we see the Cavs cleverly getting around the existing rule against intentional off-ball fouls, and the only reason Dellavedova was so obvious about it was that he didn't have to be deceptive. If there had been a rule against intentional fouls on free throw attempts (as a recent NBA memo seemed to suggest was now in place) he could still have accomplished his mission by appearing to fight more legitimately for rebounding position.
If you make this a judgement call, teams will continue to push against the boundaries, and the only way you'll be able to discourage that will be to increase the penalties to make it more of a gamble — which will in turn make it all the more unfair when referees mistakenly flag a foul as intentional.
2. They offend purists who believe that it should be legitimate to strategize against a player's weaknesses.
"They should just learn to hit their free throws", right? A lot of the discussion over hack-a has been a debate between these purists and pragmatists who worry that the actual, real world effect of hack-a is to reduce the entertainment value of the game. The key here for me is that, in small doses, the tactic can actually enhance a game: Will DeAndre make them pay by hitting his free throws, or will Doc be forced to sit him for critical minutes in the game? The problem comes after they've hacked DeAndre for the tenth time, and becomes absurd as they approach thirty.
My solution
My solution is not so much about the penalty for an intentional foul (extra free throws? technical fouls? team can "decline" the penalty and retain possession? etc.) as what it should be based on: not on whether it was intentional, but on a player being fouled off the ball, intentionally or not, more than N times. In other words, it doesn't depend on referees judging intent, but only on their calling fouls like they normally do (which is still a judgement call, but an unavoidable one that we already live with just fine) and it's not a prohibition, but a cap, which offers a compromise that might satisfy both the purists and the pragmatists.
Just picking my favorite among the many proposed consequences as an example, here's how my twist would work:
Upon the Nth off-ball foul on a given player in a game, if the player's team is in the bonus, it will have the option of having the ball handler at the time shoot the free throws instead of the fouled player. (Or: a technical foul will be assessed. Or: whatever your favorite penalty is. I personally like letting the ball handler take the shots because it's the simplest.)
And what should N be? Some number high enough that it would only rarely be hit unless a team is fouling intentionally, and low enough to put a reasonable cap on the tactic, while still allowing it to have some life.
My solution has the following advantages:
- It doesn't require the referees to judge intent.
- It still penalizes poor free throw shooting. (DeAndre is still going to cost his team some points)
- It still allows the strategic jockeying that can take place around poor free throw shooters.
- It puts a hard cap on such jockeying, to prevent it from taking over a game.
- It makes no distinctions between the last two minutes of a game and the rest of the game.
Also, when combined with my consequence of choice (that a ball handler can shoot the free throws instead) it has these additional advantages:
- It does not, in itself, add to the length of a game by introducing extra free throws.
- It does not alter the shot clock or game clock or who has possession in any way, thus avoiding any potential negative unforeseen consequences.
It does, however, have one disadvantage that I can see. No matter where you set N, it will be possible for a player to be fouled unintentionally that many times. In particular, if your opponent has a monster post-up big, you might end up fouling him quite a bit just fighting him for position on the block. However, it doesn't seem all that catastrophic to me that the rules should allow a great post-up player to do his thing a little more often, and if a good value is chosen for N, it won't happen very often at all, anyway. Finally, if the consequence is low impact, like simply allowing another player to shoot the free throws, the distortion caused by these rare cases will be minimal, especially if the fouled player was a good free throw shooter to begin with.
If you see any flaws or other disadvantages to this idea, please let me know.