'Hacking' is one of the most talked about topics currently in the NBA. For those of you who are unaware of what hacking is, let me break it down for you. Hacking is a basketball term used for a team who deliberately fouls the opposition's worst free throw shooters on many possessions.
The current rules are that when a player is fouled off the ball, they are sent to the free throw line. So, a player can simply 'wrap up' the opposing player for it to be called a foul. The player who got fouled then goes and shoots two free throws, as per normal.
Many of you will be think 'what is the problem with this?' And to be honest, it doesn't sound as bad as it is. Although, when a poor free throw shooter is being fouled every possession, the team has no chance to score and the game itself is ruined. For example, late last year the Los Angeles Clippers were locked in an intense battle with the San Antonio Spurs. It was a magnificent game between two extremely talented teams. It was then that the hacking started on the Los Angeles Cippers' centre, DeAndre Jordan. As well as being known as one of the best rebounders in the league, DeAndre also has a poor reputation for shooting free throws. Jordan shot a total of twenty free throws that game, hitting just eight of them. This just completely ruined the game.
Coincidentally, the next day saw the Clippers play the Houston Rockets. Houston have one of the worst free throw shooters in the league as well, Dwight Howard. That game, Jordan hit four of twelve free throws and Howard hit six of sixteen, again ruining what should have been a great basketball game. Let me remind you again that players were fouling these two men while they didn't even have the ball. In fact, there was one incident, not in this game, but in another one more recently where a player was passing the ball in from the sideline and a defender fouled him! Now that crossed the line.
In my opinion, hacking is cheating. It is not how basketball should be played and it is something that must stop! The only way it will stop is if the NBA come up with a rule to punish teams who use hacking. There are various ways of doing so.
Firstly, the most common option is instead of calling this type of foul as a shooting foul, they should call it as a technical foul. Now a technical foul would result in the player who has been fouled shooting free throws then the same team retaining possession. This would make hacking pointless, as the team would get the ball back anyway. So basically they are giving free points away.
The easiest option would be to treat a hacking foul as a regular blocking foul, where the side retains possession on the sidelines.
Now the next option is a little bit more unique and still leaves teams with the option to hack. Everything stays the same except a hacking foul counts as two fouls. This would prevent less people from hacking, because as you probably know, when an NBA player commits six fouls in one game, they get sent off.
If they wanted to take hacking even more seriously, and this is what I believe should happen, the hacking foul should straight away be called a flagrant two foul. This is similar to a technical foul, except the player who commits the foul gets sent off for the rest of the game and possibly even fined. Now this is what must happen to prove that hacking is not only not allowed, but also a form of cheating.
So, this is what hacking is and how they can stop it. The NBA has to do something soon before every single team begins to hack and the NBA becomes a free throw contest.
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