NBA commissioner Adam Silver said he increasingly believes the league should change its Hack-a-Shaq rules this offseason.
LeBron James – who has the commissioner’s ear on a number of issues – disagreed.
LeBron, via Chris Haynes of Cleveland.com:
“I don’t really see a problem with it,” James said at shootaround Friday in preparation for the Celtics. “At the end of the day, it’s a strategy of the game and whatever it takes to win. If that’s a part of the game, and you have a guy that is a bad free-throw shooter and you put him on the line, that’s a part of strategy.”
“That’s no different from a guy that can’t shoot well from the outside and you try to make him shoot bad from outside, or if a guy is turnover-prone and you put pressure on him. It’s all part of strategy. It’s no different,” he said.
There is a difference – a big one.
Hacking someone takes no basketball skill.
I could intentionally foul DeAndre Jordan or Andre Drummond. I could not keep a bad NBA outside shooter from getting into the paint. I could not force a turnover-prone NBA player into coughing up the ball.
There’s nothing wrong with exploiting an opponent’s weakness, but with the exception of hacking, that takes ability of your own.
Hacking is an outlier strategy, and as a result, it deserves special treatment in the rulebook.
