Ending Hack-A-Shaq
by Dave Winer Tuesday, June 14, 2016

I had an idea watching last night's Finals game, Golden State vs Cleveland. At the end of the third quarter, the Warriors were playing Hack-a-Shaq with Tristan Thompson, the Cleveland big man who is a bad foul shooter.

There's a lot of hand-wringing over the practice, it destroys the flow of the game, but it's legal, and when one team puts a guy on the court who can't shoot free throws, the door is open.

Anyway, the NBA hasn't come up with a rule that would effectively stop it. During the game, feeling the frustration, I wondered why they don't flip it around. After a certain number of fouls committed on a player, the team being fouled can choose a different free throw shooter for the guy being Shaq'd. 

That would provide a limit on repeated fouling of the bad free-throw shooter. Make the limit 6, the same number of fouls that cause a player to foul out of a game.