<div class="quote_poster">Quote:</div><div class="quote_post">LOS ANGELES (AP) -- The Los Angeles Clippers treated Ben Wallace as though he was Shaquille O'Neal. And the Detroit Pistons center truly appreciated the attention. Out of desperation, the Clippers fouled Wallace down the stretch, employing the Hack-A-Shaq strategy. He missed 15 of 20 free throws in the fourth quarter. But the Pistons overcame it and beat the Clippers 109-101 Sunday night. "That's a compliment," Wallace said. "They're just saying they couldn't play with us, that's all. They took themselves out of the flow of the game. Teams do that all the time against me, and they always lose. "Sometimes you outsmart yourself." Chauncey Billups scored 25 points and Richard Hamilton added 23 for the Pistons, who committed only four turnovers and extended their winning streak to six. Trailing by 14 points, the Clippers narrowed the gap to 92-84 with a 21-footer by Sam Cassell, a running hook shot by Cuttino Mobley and a dunk by Chris Wilcox with six minutes to play. Their game plan the rest of the way was to keep fouling Wallace, who came in shooting 59 percent from the line. "If a guy's shooting that poorly from the free throw line, you play the odds," said Elton Brand, who led the Clippers with 36 points and 10 rebounds. "He's a poor free throw shooter, and they really weren't making too many mistakes. So we thought, 'Hey, they'll miss some free throws, we'll get the rebounds and we'll go.' We got him to miss the free throws, but unfortunately for us, we didn't get the rebounds. If we had, it would have looked like a great move." Wallace missed both attempts with 4:55 remaining, but grabbed the rebound on the second and threw it out to Billups, who drained a 3-pointer to give the Pistons a 97-86 cushion. The Clippers got no closer than nine points after that. Wallace finished with 13 points and 12 rebounds. "There were about five minutes left and they were down by eight points," Rasheed Wallace said. "I could see maybe trying something like that if it was a two-point or a three-point game. But why do it when you're eight points down?" </div> Source Pistons dominated this game and put on a clinic against the Clippers. They were in cruise control for a majority of the game. Then Dunleavy decided to try the "Hack-a-Shaq" strategy on Ben Wallace. If you look at the boxscore from this game, it's not a misprint when you see Big Ben shot 22 times from the free throw line. It completely ruined this game, and if I were his player I'd be insulted having to foul a player instead stopping them defensively. The worst part was the Clippers had momentum going and finally got under a 10 point margin. After Dunleavey decided to start fouling every time the Pistons had the ball, the Clippers lost their momentum and rhythm. Right before the game ended Rasheed Wallace let his former coach know how he felt about the classless strategy Dunleavy tried using. Even though it was effective, because Big Ben missed 99% of them, it's just an ugly brand of basketball. I hope the league can tweak the rule to make it 5 minutes left before you can stop the "Hack-a-Shaq" strategy or if a team leads by 'x' amount you're not allowed to foul a player off the ball intentionally.
It's simply not basketball, I agree the league needs to do something about It. It hurt the Clips in the end after Ben's missed free-throw he got the offensive board which led to a Chauncey three which was the ball game.
Why should the league do something about a plot that rarely happens? Ultimately the better team will win most of the time. The Spurs are a notoriously horrible free throw shooting team, try that hack-a-shack mess against them and you will lose. In fact, I believe that Nellie did try it about two years back against Bruce Bowen. Mavs lost that game I believe. Although I can kind of see the argument. The league went so far as to ban the AI crossover, and make rules about guarding Shaq. They have complete authority to ban this. Why not award three free throws? Or consider it a non-violent flagrant foul and allow the team to choose the shooter. Naismith is turning in his grave over these silly strategies.
why should they implement new rules??.......thats bs its about winning and losing,it dont matter how u get there there not playing the game for the fans benefit,there tyring to win as a team i think if it works then it was worth it
I'm curious, has this strategy ever actually lead to a win? You'd think that the strategy would simply disappear if it wasn't effective.
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting edgar-davids:</div><div class="quote_post">why should they implement new rules??.......thats bs its about winning and losing,it dont matter how u get there there not playing the game for the fans benefit,there tyring to win as a team i think if it works then it was worth it</div> You have got to be kidding me. Did you really say the game isn't for the fan's benefit? Perhaps you don't realize that if the fans don't want to watch, your team doesn't make any money, and if I've said it once, I've said it a million times, THIS IS A BUSINESS! The NBA is a multi-national corporation. They are in this for the money, that is all. If the NBA saw a particular brand of play that was hampering their abililty to get fans to the arena, they would most certainly create new rules to stop it. Hack-A-Shaq was one of those rules. It killed the end of games and ruled out any possibility of actual high-pressure, high-excitement finishes to games, therefore keeping the fans more than a little disinterested. What did they do? Made a rule. If this becomes commonplace for the Pistons (an extremely marketable and popular team) to have to deal with, there will be action from the NBA front office, and that'll be that. If you honestly believe this game isn't played for the fans, you need to go back to economics 101 and learn yourself a little something about supply and demand.
^^ it's a business but it's more of a sport than a business, fans want to see the game for what it is and don't want every aspect to be edited. rules have been made so that you can't foul away from the ball with under 2 minutes left. The guy you were quoting was more talking about players desires to win not the league as a whole, players want to win as do coaches, coaches don't want to lose in the most exciting manner possible, they will do what they can to win. Maybe instead of working on rules big ben should work on his free-throws. You talk about how becuase the pistons are so popular and marketable the league should take this issue into even further consideration. Last time the league was worried about a specific team they tried to help the lakers by changing the first round from 5 - 7 games which in my opinion was one of the worst decisions ever. Lastly, you talk about an exciting ending, the clipps were down by 8 points, resorting to hack-a-ben i don't think they took much away from the excitement of the game, at most they made the possibility of the game becoming close again and becoming exciting. You need to stop editing what people say just so you can bring up stuff like businessness and economics which you probably have an minor amount of knowledge in.
You're fooling yourself if you don't realize that money is the biggest factor that dictates the League's actions. Not the purity of the game. Since fan interest is what leads to the money, the League pays attention to it most. And not the purist fans, who simply enjoy the game. Casual fans and people who seek entertainment are the biggest source of revenue for the League. If the average fan doesn't like this sort of the game, I don't think its unreasonable for the League to change it. All sports are built that way (eg: Hockey resorting to a shootout at the end of the game to bring back fan interest.)
<div class="quote_poster">Quoting babybulls:</div><div class="quote_post">^^ it's a business but it's more of a sport than a business, fans want to see the game for what it is and don't want every aspect to be edited. rules have been made so that you can't foul away from the ball with under 2 minutes left. The guy you were quoting was more talking about players desires to win not the league as a whole, players want to win as do coaches, coaches don't want to lose in the most exciting manner possible, they will do what they can to win. Maybe instead of working on rules big ben should work on his free-throws. You talk about how becuase the pistons are so popular and marketable the league should take this issue into even further consideration. Last time the league was worried about a specific team they tried to help the lakers by changing the first round from 5 - 7 games which in my opinion was one of the worst decisions ever. Lastly, you talk about an exciting ending, the clipps were down by 8 points, resorting to hack-a-ben i don't think they took much away from the excitement of the game, at most they made the possibility of the game becoming close again and becoming exciting. You need to stop editing what people say just so you can bring up stuff like businessness and economics which you probably have an minor amount of knowledge in.</div> I assure you, I have more than a minor amount of knowledge in the affairs of business, first of all (I own my own, and regularly have to change things like marketing standards and product supply to meet things like, lo-and-behold, revenue streams, which is what any business runs around, just like the NBA). Secondly, I didn't edit what anyone said, I quoted him, and refuted his argument, nothing more, and certainly no sleight of hand from my corner. Nextly, the game ending in Hack-A-Whoever is never exciting, NEVER, and just as Chutney made clear, no casual fan wants to see that nonsense. It's not basketball, and even the most ignorant casual fan knows that. And I didn't say that the league should take further issue, I said it would be in the league's best interests to do so, again, merely defending my position, not making any statement of eventuality, just saying it hurts the league this way, and wouldn't in another way. Aside from that, you are right about the issue being a player's issue. Wallace took offense and that's true, for most players it is about winning and losing, but Rasheed is a classic example of the player who also has his mind on his bank account, as most players are wont to do. Again, this is their job, they want to win and be good at it, sure, but even more than that, they want the millions associated with being an entertainment superstar, Rasheed is no exception. Rasheed was angry because he wanted the game to end in a classy and respectable manner, and not in disgrace as it did. That's certainly understandable, no one holds that against him. But remember, always in the back of a player's mind is that little buzzer that goes off that says the fans wouldn't like this, so I better not let it happen. Because, once again, no fans, no millions, no NBA. Simply put.
^^ Rasheed was one of the original hack-a-shaq's so I don't know how genuine he is saying he wants the game to end classy, he's just pissed it was used against his team. You did edit what he was saying cause he was talking about winning vs losing and you took it from his one game persepective to a micro-economics arguement about the basketball as a whole. You also can't foul away from the ball in the last two minutes, so you're actually not affecting dramatic endings. Chutney, I know the NBA is a business, you did nothing more than point out the obvious so I don't know exactly what you're getting at. One game 20 something games into the season is not going to dramatically affect the NBA. I also don't know if I would be so quick to praise hockey and their changes, most hockey players don't like the rules and the game is no longer hockey, you're not allowed to play defense. Hockey was desperate for money and a fan base and made extreme changes to the sport in interest of money and not the sport as a whole, it also hasn't been completely proven that these rule changes are successful. I do not want the NBA to follow this path changing the sport into something it's not just because people like stern thinks it's going to increase the fan base.
