On Nov. 30, fans with NBA League Pass were treated to an unusual choice. They could watch the Dallas Mavericks intentionally foul their former point guard, Rajon Rondo, now with the Sacramento Kings, or change channels to see the Portland Trail Blazers hack Los Angeles Clippers center DeAndre Jordan.
On Twitter, NBA podcaster Nate Duncan captured the unique moment:
Two games on, both in Hack-a mode pic.twitter.com/L8And4LsVg
— Nate Duncan (@NateDuncanNBA) December 1, 2015While that moment was an outlier, it illustrated a rising trend. After high-profile hacking during last season's playoffs, NBA coaches are choosing to use intentional fouls more frequently than ever before, making it harder for the league to downplay it as an isolated issue involving a handful of players.
Given the outbreak of intentional fouling this season, the NBA must not wait to take action to prevent hacking.
Ready for 400-plus intentional fouls?
In the spring, I worked to identify every time over the past three seasons NBA teams had hacked a poor shooter. With the help of my Twitter followers, I've extended that database in real time this season, allowing us to compare intentional foul rates. The results are striking.
In October and November alone, I identified 105 hacks -- more than in the entire 2012-13 regular season. While I ultimately found 164 intentional fouls during the 2014-15 regular season, the vast majority of those came after DeAndre Jordan was hacked 13 times by the San Antonio Spurs on the first day after the All-Star break. The league didn't hit triple-digit intentional fouls last season until March 27.
We have zoomed past 100 already and, at the current rate, we will end up at more than 400 in the regular season. In the postseason, the rate will likely only grow.
It's not just two players
One of the reasons the NBA chose not to pursue any change in the rules allowing intentional fouls was the belief that their impact is ultimately limited.
"The data shows that we're largely talking about two teams, throughout the playoffs," NBA commissioner Adam Silver told reporters during the NBA Finals. "In fact, 90 percent of the occurrences of Hack-a-Shaq involve the Rockets and the Clippers, and for the most part, it's two players.
"Seventy-five percent involve two players, DeAndre Jordan and Dwight Howard. So then the question becomes, should we be making that rule change largely for two teams and two players?"
That argument will prove impossible to make this season. While Jordan is still the foremost hack target, he's hardly alone.
With Houston struggling, opponents haven't hacked Howard as often this season, even though his free throw percentage has hardly improved. But on Thursday the Lakers hacked Howard six times in the fourth quarter on national TV, making the TNT late game even later. And new candidates -- notably Drummond, Mahinmi and Whiteside -- have emerged.
Last season, Howard, Jordan and Josh Smith were the only three players hacked more than 13 times all season, including the playoffs, and Jordan was the only one hacked more than 32. Already, Drummond is nearing that mark, with Mahinmi and Whiteside also on pace for 30-plus intentional fouls during the regular season alone.
A total of 20 players have been hacked at least once, and 20 of the league's 30 coaches have called for at least one intentional foul.
With more targets, hacking has suddenly become a common occurrence throughout the league. During the 2014-15 regular season, 4.5 percent of games featured at least one intentional foul. That rate has more than doubled to 11.8 percent this season. In fact, games with at least four hacks are now nearly as common as those with any hacks last season.
Coaches circumventing the rulebook
The above totals don't include "unintentional" intentional fouls late in games. Despite the NBA's reluctance to ban hacks, there actually is a rule against them -- in the game's last two minutes, when committed away from the play. But coaches are increasingly finding ways to work around that prohibition by getting creative.
One method that is growing in popularity is fouling a poor free throw shooter who sets a screen for the ball handler and is thus considered part of the play, something that has happened to Jordan at times and was used against Drummond by the Phoenix Suns earlier this month.
That pales in comparison to the ingenuity of the New Orleans Pelicans on Dec. 2. Head coach Alvin Gentry inserted Norris Cole to grab Dwight Howard as Howard boxed out on a free throw in the last two minutes. Not only did the Pelicans put the player they wanted on the free throw line, they did it without taking any time off the clock.
Though the Rockets won that game, an even more obvious intentional foul helped the Clippers come back on Monday. In a clip that went viral, J.J. Redick jumped on Drummond's back as he boxed out, then hit a game-tying 3-pointer after Drummond split two free throws. The Clippers went on to beat the Pistons in overtime.
As coaches exploit these loopholes and circumvent the spirit of the rules, it's clear the current rules are insufficient.
The NBA can solve this
If league officials hoped that the hack-a-Shaq problem would go away quietly and that last season was an outlier, they misjudged badly. Instead, its influence has multiplied this season.
Individual players might come and go as hack targets depending on their free throw percentages. Whiteside has made 60 percent of his free throws after intentional fouls this season and Mahinmi has made 59.4 percent (despite making just 36.7 percent of his other free throws), marks at which fouling them becomes a negative play for defenses.
As long as coaches are actively seeking out opportunities to hack, however, there are likely to be a handful of players worth fouling -- especially in situations in which a team trails late in a game, when hacking can be a winning strategy by creating more possessions even if it doesn't yield fewer points per possession on average.
That was the scenario on Nov. 30. The Blazers trailed by 14 with just less than four minutes remaining when Terry Stotts began fouling Jordan. (Portland had previously hacked Jordan in both the second and third quarters of the game.)
With a comfortable lead, Clippers coach Doc Rivers refused to capitulate by removing Jordan from the game, and he ended up shooting 16 free throws before the two-minute mark, when intentional fouls away from the ball result in a technical foul shot plus possession. Those two minutes of game time took nearly 15 to play in real time despite the Blazers getting no closer than 14 points.
Jordan ended up attempting a franchise-record 34 free throws, 27 of them on intentional fouls. It's hard to term that basketball and it's even harder to call it entertaining. In a league that has sought ways to improve the quality of the product for fans and keep games from running too long, intentional fouls aren't helping.
Unless Santa Claus brings improved foul shooting to the likes of Jordan and Drummond, this issue is not going away on its own. Instead, it's going the wrong direction. The NBA must step in and find a solution that prohibits intentional fouls before the situation gets even worse.