NBA When Should You Hack-a-Shaq?

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(Edited)

In this video my brother Mark aka MFA goes over another NBA basketball video and this time explores the infamous Hack-a-Shaq strategy. This strategy involves intentionally fouling a poor free throw shooter and is named after historically bad free throw shooter Shaquille O'Neal. To analyze if this is a good strategy or not, MFA calculates the league average for points per possession in the 2021-2022 NBA season and found it to be 1.146 points / possession. This translates to a free throw percentage of 57.3%. This means that intentionally fouling a player that shoots below 57.3% benefits your team but above this % it hurts your team. For example, Stephen Curry shoots 92.3% from the free throw line, so you should definitely avoid fouling Steph!

Note that additional factors need to be considered when employing the Hack-a-Shaq strategy, such as getting into the Bonus too early or new NBA rules that penalize intentionally fouling opponents at the final 2 minutes of each quarter. Also note that the "Bonus" is when a team goes above 4 fouls in a quarter, thus resulting in 2 free throws even in non-shooting motions.

The timestamps of the video are shown below:

0:00 - History of the Hack-a-Shaq
0:27 - Intentionally Fouling an Opponent
0:39 - 2021-2022 NBA Season
0:59 - Don't Foul Steph Curry!
1:38 - What % Free Throw Shooter Should be Intentionally Fouled?
2:05 - Conclusion

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NBA When Should You Hack-a-Shaq?

NBA Hack a Shaq.jpeg

History of the Hack-a-Shaq

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Fouling a poor free throw shooter intentionally has been a strategy in the NBA for years. It started in the 1999-2000 season by Dallas Mavericks coach Don Nelson. Wikipedia

He made his team intentionally foul Shaquille O’Neal because he was a poor free throw shooter.

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Intentionally Fouling an Opponent

So the question is, when is it beneficial for a team to intentionally foul an opponent?

It all depends on the person who you intentionally foul and how well they shoot free throws.

Let’s see some numbers to get an idea of how this works.

2021-2022 NBA Season

The total number of possessions per team on average in a game is 99.95 and the average points per game is 114.50.

We must take the 114.50 points and divide it by the 99.95 possessions. This will give us
1.146 points/possession.

Don't Foul Steph Curry!

If you intentionally foul Steph curry for example, is it benefiting your team or not?

image.png

Steph Curry in 2021/2022 shot 92.3% from the free throw line.

If you intentionally foul him, he will take 2 free throws and score 92.3% of them. You take 2 and multiply it by 0.923. This comes out to 1.846 points every time you foul Steph Curry intentionally.

In other words, he will score 1.846 points per possession. The average points/possession across the entire league that we talked about earlier was 1.146. This means you should not foul Steph Curry intentionally because he will make you pay.

What % Free Throw Shooter Should Be Intentionally Fouled?

So the question is, how poorly does somebody have to shoot from the free throw line in order for it to benefit your team?

To find that we make the following equation:

1.146 (points per possession) = 2x

The x is the free throw percentage. The free throw percentage is multiplied by 2 because there are 2 free throw attempts you get every time you are fouled.

You solve for x and get 0.573.

Conclusion

If you intentionally foul a free throw shooter who shoots below 57.3%, it will benefit your team. But you might risk fouling out players if you do this strategy for an extended period in the game.

*This strategy typically is done if you go into the bonus early in the quarter. You do not want to start this strategy before going into the bonus because the opponent could always bench the player being fouled and then you have to play the rest of the quarter in the bonus.

**Also, there are rules in the game now where you cannot intentionally foul somebody when there is 2 minutes or less left in each quarter.

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