"Hack a Shaq"

Nowadays, the NBA is having their Playoffs, an incredible show. Millions of viewers look every match of the series during the month that last the playoffs. Series with full of emotional shots, buzzer-beaters… (For those that don’t know what is a buzzer-beater is when someone makes the shot to win the game just before the buzzer point the end).

Can something destroy this show, and take away all that emotions and feelings? Can something mess these matches?

The answer is Yes, we are seeing a practice during these playoffs called “Hack-a-Shaq” originally. This practice consist in making faults to the worst free-throw shooter of the other team to make them fail and try to recover some disadvantage in the next attack.

This technique was initially introduced in the NBA by the former head coach of the Dallas Mavericks, Don Nelson, versus the Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls and the player that receives the faults was Dennis Rodman the former Center of this team.

The technique was better known when it was executed in order to stop one of the greatest and most dominant centers in NBA history, Shaquille O’Neal that was extremely bad at the free-throw line.

At these early stages of the playoffs, we have seen several coaches using this technique when his team falls behind in the scoreboard, some days ago Deandre Jordan the center of Los Angeles Clippers broke a record of free-throw attempts with 34 times at the line. The situation derives in larger and larger matches and lower audiences so it’s becoming to be a problem for the NBA.

These days the General Managers of the NBA teams have had several meeting talking about this issue that concerns the entire basketball world, but it don’t seems that they find a solution. What do you think about this issue in the NBA? How can they solve it? Right your possible solutions at the comments to give some ideas to Adam Silver, the commissioner of the NBA.

Thanks for reading!

Sergi Susín Calle