Hack-A-Shaq: It’s Actually About Ethics In Basketball

Adam Silver said on ESPN’s Mike and Mike yesterday that the NBA will consider changing the rules concerning the popular “Hack-A-Shaq” strategy.

Basketball as we know it is doomed.

Yesterday NBA commissioner Adam Silver gave basketball a death sentence by announcing during a podcast with USA Today that the NBA will likely make changes to the rules in an effort to prevent or stop the tactic known as “Hack-A-Shaq.”

"“Even for those who had not wanted to make the change, we’re being forced to that position just based on these sophisticated coaches understandably using every tactic available to them,” Silver said. “It’s just not the way we want to see the game played.”Hack-A-Player is up this year. The number of those intentional fouls through mid-December surpassed the number of times it happened last season (164), and the league is closing in on 300 Hack-A-Player instances before the All-Star break.Through Tuesday’s games, fouls against Los Angeles Clippers center DeAndre Jordan, Detroit Pistons center Andre Drummond and Houston Rockets Dwight Howard have accounted for 69% of Hack-A-Player fouls. Jordan accounts for 34%.Silver knows the data. But the interaction with fans as he watches a game has made an impact, too.“Again, as I travel around the league, there’s that one school of thought ‘Guys have got to make their free throws,’ ” Silver said. “But then at the end of the day, we are an entertainment property, and it’s clear that when you’re in the arena, that fans are looking at me, shrugging their shoulders with that look saying, ‘Aren’t you going to do something about this?’ ”"

Adam Silver is already retreating from his words in October. It is a slippery slope, man.

Silver wrote the first words of basketball’s eulogy on ESPN’s Mike and Mike in October when he said the NBA was even looking at changing the rules around the popular strategy of fouling a poor free throw shooter away from the ball.

The fact that the NBA is even considering changing the rule is just another way the social-media obsessed ‘millennial culture‘ is destroying everything we know and love. I don’t care, if DeAndre Jordan were a real man, he’d be able to hit his free throws.

More from NBA

• Meet Cooper Flagg: The best American prospect since LeBron James
• Are the Miami Heat laying the groundwork for their next super team?
• Sophomore Jump: 5 second-year NBA players bound to breakout
• Constructing the NBA’s perfect all-under-25 starting five
• Grading every NBA team’s highest draft pick in the last five years

Don’t be fooled. This is a slippery slope. First we allow teams to just keep the ball after being fouled (or whatever the NBA has in mind), and the next thing you know we’ll have a four-point line and all 30 teams will win the NBA championship because we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings.

The NBA isn’t about entertainment, it is about some nebulous concept known as ‘sport’ where grown men will prove their masculinity by beating the other team. It isn’t about the fans, it is only about proving something vague about our culture. It is apparent that the NBA is already considering a move away from proving who the alpha males are in the world and into a place where everyone gets a ribbon for participating. Basketball is about making free throws, not about actually being able to pass the ball, make shots, and generally run a coherent form of offense.

But what we have to do before Adam Silver allows the NBA to be ruined is to take the sport back to a better time, when men were men and you could get a shoe shine by a young lad on the street. Let me throw out a few ideas so we can take basketball back to a purer time. All the newer rules that make the game faster and easier on the eyes? Well, those things are for the timid and weak.

First of all, let’s bring back hand-checking and ban zone defense. Zone defense is unnatural and only man-on-man defense should be played. You shouldn’t be able to dance your way through the lane because someone blew their defensive assignment and forgot to cover you.

Secondly, let’s go back to 1979 and get rid of the three-point line. That’s a shot for cowards like Stephen Curry. Let’s see what his Warriors can do when pace and space no longer matter. Keep shooting from 30-feet out, you jerk, it is only going to be worth two points if the basketball purists get their way, which is obviously the correct and only way.

Thirdly, let’s go back to 1954, and do away with the shot clock. Basketball was better when everyone stood around and watched and waited for someone to shoot. There is no reason why we can’t do that today. Let’s see what these floor generals like Chris Paul can do when they have to think more than 24 seconds at a time.

Also, let’s bring real fighting back, not this “hold me back” stuff they do today. I don’t care if Rudy Tomjanovich was almost killed by Kermit Washington over a game of basketball, men were real men when we allowed them to pull back and punch a man so hard that he had a fractured skull, broken jaw, broken nose, other facial injuries and leakage of spinal fluid. That’s just how sports should be played. It doesn’t matter how much we’ve learned about CTE and other brain injuries, let’s get these guys slugging each other over trying to get a ball in a basket.

Speaking of which, I think we still need to take the game back even further. Much further.

Let’s get rid of these rims and nets (Get a better name, Brooklyn!) and go back to an actual peach basket. And no, you nancies, we aren’t even going to cut the bottom out. No, let’s hire some small kid to climb a ladder each time and retrieve the ball so he’ll know what an honest day’s work means. And know, there won’t be a safety harness, gravity will be his teacher if he can’t stay on top of the ladder. That’s how it should be.

Oh, and let’s get rid of these basketballs, and use a soccer ball like they did in 1891, just how Dr. James Naismith would have wanted it. If fact, no dribbling either you cry babies. THE GOOD CANADIAN DOCTOR WOULD HAVE WANTED IT THAT WAY. You’ll have to pass the ball and stay in one place. A real team would pass it at least four times a possession anyway.

I don’t think modern arenas are built where fans can interfere with shots, but we should look into that too so we can get back to basketball in its purest form when there was no backboard. BASKETBALL PURITY. I WANT TACKLING, PUNCHES, BLACK EYES FOR EVERYONE. THAT’S WHAT NAISMITH WOULD HAVE WANTED!

More hoops habit: NBA Trade Rumors: 10 Landing Spots For Blake Griffin

We don’t need basketball to be entertaining or watchable for fans. We need it to be pure. We need to see the next Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors matchup be decided by a 1-0 score, and you know why? BASKETBALL PURITY. THE SPORT DOESN’T NEED TO EVOLVE.

It’s a slippery slope, man That’s what we’re on if we let this Hack-A-Shaq rule change. LET’S MAKE BASKETBALL GREAT AGAIN.