NBA changes to stop Hack-a-Shaq

The NBA on Tuesday announced rule changes designed to limit the "Hack-A-Shaq" strategy of intentionally fouling bad free throw shooters away from the ball. Beginning next season, all fouls away from the ball in the final two minutes of every quarter will result in one free throw and the ball out of bounds for the offensive team (this has been the rule for the final two minutes of the fourth quarter). The same rule will apply to fouls on inbounds plays (the new rage was jumping out of bounds to foul the inbounder). And jumping on a player's back during a free throw (a recent development used in the final two minutes) will be deemed a flagrant foul, punishable by one free throw and the ball, plus possible future punishment of the fouling player for repeated violations.

Unfortunately, I am not sure this gets the NBA where it wants to be, because it does nothing to deter Hack-a-Shaq outside the last two minutes of a quarter. Perhaps the league had statistics showing that the strategy was more prevalent in those times. But the rule change does nothing to stop the reductio of the strategy--a January 2016 game in which the Houston Rockets intentionally fouled DeAndre Jordan of the Los Angeles Clippers twelve times in a row (four times, using an end-of-the bench player, to put them in the bonus and eight times to put Jordan on the free throw line) at the beginning of the third quarter. I still believe the better rule would be to give the offense the choice of shooting the free throws or taking the ball out of bounds for off-the-ball fouls. Presumably, teams will choose the latter option for all but their best free throw shooters, thereby eliminating the perverse incentive to intentionally foul, at least away from the ball. But the NBA went a different way, given us temporal, if not complete, relief from this eyesore.

Update: This Deadspin piece makes a fair point: Hack-a-Blank only becomes worthwhile if the hacking team is in the bonus following the fourth foul of the quarter, so that the hacked player would shoot. If a team is otherwise playing good defense and the game is not being called unusually close, that may not happen until 6-8 minutes into the quarter. So the window left for Hack-a-Blank is not the first ten minutes of a quarter, but maybe only a 2-3 minute window before the last two minutes. Teams typically do not do what the Rockets did in the game described above, hacking right from the beginning of the quarter, using an end-of-bench player only to commit a succession of fouls; this is what drew so much attention to that game.