Examining the State of Hack-A-Shaq

Last Thursday, it appeared that the NBA would find a way to eliminate Hack-a-Shaq this summer. The main concern was the impact on length of games, and simply charting free throws and game duration shows that concern to be legit.[1. …But that graph doesn’t take into account reviews, timeouts, national tv game vs. local, countless substitutions, and other stoppages long or short.] After Andre Drummond drew the highest amount of fouls in a game since 2005-06 with 25, Tom Ziller wrote about a simple change to non-shooting fouls while in the bonus. Teams would be given the choice of two free throws or to inbound the ball. The shot clock would stay the same if an inbound pass was chosen unless it was below 14 seconds which, like for kicked ball violations, the shot clock would then be set to 14. Pretty simple indeed.

So for this post, I looked at free throw and foul-related statistics that would be impacted by such a change. Three players who would be most noticeably affected are Deandre Jordan, Dwight Howard, and Andre Drummond.[1. And on a lesser level (deep breath) Clint Capela, Ian Mahinmi, Hassan Whiteside, Mason Plumlee, James McAdoo, Andrew Bogut, Ed Davis, Rudy Gobert, Rajon Rondo, Josh Smith, and probably a few others.] Each of them are fine players but bad free throw shooters at this point in their careers, and when given a choice between two free throws or inbounding the ball I assume the latter would be the preferred choice. Opponents would stop intentionally fouling them in hopes of two missed free throws and essentially a turnover.

In the past, this all was a situation to only shrug at or, in one case, chuckle at a joke between Gregg Popovich and Shaq. These intentional fouling situations are usually logged in play-by-play feeds not as Hack-a-Shaqs, but just as personal take fouls.[1. It has to be noted that, like just about anything else in play-by-play data, foul types are not perfect. Personal take fouls are possibly under recorded because of trying to decide which personal fouls outside of the final moments or Hack-A-Shaq situations really are intentional, but easily the biggest issue in foul types has been between personal and shot fouls. There have been plenty of times while keeping tabs on penalty-related stats that the fourth team foul was a personal foul, but one that led to two free throws. That’s just not correct.] That groups them into late-game fouling situations and wrap-up fouls to prevent fast breaks. During the 2010-11 and 2011-12 seasons there were only an average of .66 per game, most of which appear to be late-game fouling. Only Steve Nash drew more than 30 in one of those seasons while, back then, DeAndre Jordan and Dwight Howard combined for 23. Hack-a-Shaq still happened, but not really often enough to both be an annoyance and an impact on certain statistics.

Since then, the number of personal take fouls per game has doubled, up to 1.34 this season and the average for power forwards and centers is over four times as high. DeAndre Jordan drew 134 this season by himself, and recorded a per-36-minute rate of 1.86. The top 10 in personal takes drawn per 36 minutes since 2010-11, minimum 500 minutes, are now all bigs.[1. Per 36 minute stats are probably frowned upon here, but I don’t mind them when it comes to fouling.]

So without these fouls, free throw and foul-related stats are obviously going to change, but by how much? This season I kept tabs on what happens in and out of the bonus/penalty, when a defense runs out of fouls to give and every team foul leads to two free throws. You can find some basic stats on a team-wide level at the Team Ratings and Statistics page, but there’s so much more to roll out in time.

For this post, looking at just free throw rate wasn’t enough so I looked at what happened to those from Jordan, Howard, and Drummond when their team was in the bonus compared to out of it. To no surprise, the difference in these players’ free throw rates between the two situations was a bit larger than the league-average of 25 percent, from 21.9 to 46.8. They had the top three differences in the league, minimum 20 attempted shots in the bonus:

Though Jordan’s free throw rate by the end of the season declined since a look at what it was like three months ago, he still finished with over 100 more free throws while in the bonus compared to some of the best players at drawing more natural fouls like James Harden, DeMarcus Cousins and DeMar DeRozan. Who knows who spent more or less time in the bonus between each other. I don’t have total bonus time for players and lineups just yet.[1. I have team totals, though.]

We can take this one step further, and it just seems fitting given the topic, by looking at only personal take fouls drawn while in the penalty and outside of two minutes left in a game. This is basically either Hack-a-Shaq territory or the occasional intentional-foul-to-stop-a-fast-break-but-the-defense-forgot-they-were-in-the-penalty. For Jordan, Howard and Drummond, their free throw rates come down to earth with Jordan easily having the greatest drop. I also included a few more stats for the heck of it.[1. Another underrated player was Andrew Bogut. 12 of his 50 free throws came from personal take fouls.][1. Some numbers may be very slightly off because I excluded end-of-quarter heaves.]

Without free throws from personal takes in the mix, there should be a rise in true shooting percentage. DeAndre Jordan’s, for example, was 56.3 when in the bonus compared 66.9 when out of it. There will still be spots for opposing defenses to foul more naturally, but as we see in the table above there are a decent chunk of free throws just from intentionally fouling.

So then another obvious thing to note would be that those possessions from Hack-a-Shaq will now be available to be used by the other four teammates on the floor, but the amount of possessions spent in the bonus will drop. The Rockets and Clippers were fifth and sixth in percentage of offensive possessions spent in the bonus at 28.7 and 27.9 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, the Pistons were just below the league average of 25.7 percent. None of these teams scored more efficiently with the bonus probably because of the free throw shooting, but these were decent-scoring offenses without the bonus and the average increase when in the bonus is only about two points per 100 possessions anyway. Los Angeles and Houston trading free throws by DeAndre Jordan and Dwight Howard for possessions from great playmakers and foul-drawers like Chris Paul, whose free throw rate goes from 13.2 percent out of the bonus to 70.7 when in it and James Harden, whose goes from 46.6 percent to 64.3, would help a bit.[1. Harden’s numbers are a little strange when the league-average increase is nearly 25 percent, from 21.9 to 46.8.]

Despite that simple alternative Ziller wrote about, there will still be more natural ways to foul poor free throw shooters. For players around the rim like Jordan, Howard, and Drummond, the easiest method that comes to mind is the loose ball foul. Fortunately, teams committing these during free throws butchered this by jumping on players’ backs, which led to a rule change from personal fouls to flagrants. Nice. There have been subtler, maybe unintentional ways like this example from last year’s Finals.

Other alternatives will probably emerge somehow, someway, but it could be difficult to top how many free throws certain players would take compared to the current rules on intentional fouling.

Statistics from NBA.com and NBA.com play-by-play data.