First of all, I'm not sure if OT basketball threads go here or in the OT board, move accordingly. In a article on espn.com, Shaq said that the hack-a-shaq maneuver was cowardly. Do you consider it cowardly? It is perfectly legal, and if it's legal and you win the game doing it, is it considered cowardly?
Of course it is. Any couch who would do that falls in the same category as the Patriots recording other teams, IMO.
It is probably somewhat cowardly, but perfectly legal and quite smart as long as you don't foul out all of your players in the process. Use any legal advantage you can get.
Cowardly? Yes. Legal? Yes. To prevent from seeming too cowardly, teams should have waited until he at least touched the ball.
Big difference. What the Pats did was illegal, what the spurs do is perfectly legal. I'm still indifferent, I think its sort of cowardly, but then again at the same time as mentioned above, if he isn't talented enough too hit a free throw, tough luck. The team is exploiting his weakness. Would it be cowardly for a big point guard to post up a little guard? Or outrebound a smaller team? I just changed my mind while writing this. It's not cowardly. It's exploiting weakness.
Let's put it this way, if there was a boxer who was ponderously slow, but had a devastating left upper cut, would it be cowardly to dance around him and throw jabs instead of closing and going "mano y mano?" I say no, in sports it's your duty to exploit your opponents weaknesses and maximize your strengths. Shaq should have nutted up and learned to hit foul shots if he didn't want to get wrapped in a bear hug every time he touched the ball back in the day.
Not cowardly in the least. Free throws are part of the game. Opponents only get a finite number of fouls, and if they choose to use a lot of them giving him free throws, then it's HIS failure as a player that he can't make them. People leave Andre Miller wide open at the three point line because he's a terrible three point shooter... should he call collapsing defenses cowardly? (Also: as far as OT goes, basketball-related OT stuff should be labeled OT and posted in the main forum; non-basketball OT stuff goes in the OT forum.) Ed O.
As many have caught on to, whether or not it works and whether or not it's legal have nothing to do with whether or not it's "cowardly." The issue, of course, is what gets to count as cowardly. Cowardly is basically defined as lacking courage, but then again, courage in excess certainly must be considered a vice (even ask Aristotle). So, to sit on the knowledge that Shaq will miss his free throws and watch as he devastates double-teams and scores or finds open shooters at will, while certainly courageous, is undoubtedly foolishly so. We can call someone cowardly for lacking courage, but can we call them cowardly for not having courage in excess? In my opinion, that doesn't make much sense. There we go. Case closed. Hack-a-Shaq is not cowardly. The Voice of Reason has spoken.
Yeah and the Spurs let Bruce Bowen purposely injure players on the court. I don't care if it's legal or not. It is still cowardly and falls in the same category, IMO. Play better defense in the previous quarters so you do not have to resort to cheap play like hack a Shaq. Score more points.
Of course it's not cowardly. A large part of basketball is about forcing an opponent to play to their weaknesses. Force a guy who's a bad shooter to take the long shot as the clock is winding down. Force a guy who likes to drive to his right to go to his left. Shaq's got nobody but himself to blame for being a crappy FT shooter after all of these years. Opposing coaches would be stupid to ignore his glaring weakness.
There are two issues here, hack-a-shaq to take advantage of a poor free throw shooter and dirty fouling to injure. I agree that fouling to purposely injure people is bad, but that's not about hack-a-shaq, just how some people might foul wether they are playing hack-a-shaq or not.
It is not cowardly. Similar to what other posters have mentioned... Is forcing the man you are guarding to his left hand cowardly? Nope, it is called knowing your opponents weaknesses and forcing them into those situations.
Wait a sec.....everyone keeps saying the tactic is "legal". By definition, fouling somebody is against the rules! "Hack-a-Shaq" may be smart, and it may not be cowardly, but it is illegal.
If it works and is within the rules, it doesn't matter what labels you put on it. Is double-teaming cowardly?
I think this is semantics. I would say that fouls are not against the rules. They are actions that carry penalties, but you are "allowed" six of them within the rules. You can argue it either way, I suppose. It's sort of a question of different levels of abstraction. It's "against the rules" on the micro level of a possession, but within the rules on the macro level of the game, as there are rules regarding how many a player may committ, implying it is sanctioned (six times) within the rules.
