“If we call every foul on you Shaquille O’Neal, the game will last 4 hours!”: NBA Commissioner David Stern had to placate an irate Shaq and make him understand what he needed to change

Shaquille O’Neal was tired of players fouling him all the time – he took the matter straight to commissioner David Stern.

When you think of Shaquille O’Neal, what comes to your mind? Incredible dunks, post moves spins and pure dominance under the rim? You’d be right for all three. But what does not come to your mind is his free throw ability. That would be the last quality anybody would want to pick. And that is the very inability that opposition players and coaches wanted to exploit.

And they did, to an effective extent. The ex-Orlando Magic and Lakers big man was getting fouled so frequently, that the last few minutes of a close game resembled more of a hugging contest rather than a basketball game. He was getting tired of it, so he took matters to the higher-ups. Speaking directly to commissioner David Stern, Shaq explained to him how he was ready to fight back if this continued.

He was ready to even take a 15-20 game ban – he was that irritated by this tactic. David Stern had to calm him down and explained to him why that could not be fixed. A 300-pound man-mountain who could not be moved by 2 people together? People were going to foul him. That was their only chance of stopping him! Shaq saw the logic in that. He also saw the logic in the next statement.

If they called every foul that was committed against him, each game would be 4 hours long! Imagine watching a terrible FT shooter take about 100 throws a game. Nobody would be entertained.

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Shaquille O’Neal is one of the few guys who had the rules changed because of them

Hack-A-Shaq was a strategy that teams decided to use to foul the worst free-throw shooter on the team as a tactic to slow down the pace of the game and give away lesser points than they would otherwise. The tactic wasn’t always called that, but it was popularized with Shaquille O’Neal because he was a notoriously terrible FT shooter.

52.7% good to be exact, so despite taking 11,252 free throws in 1207 games, Shaq could barely eke out just above 5500. Shaq wasn’t the first victim of this nefarious tactic, it was Wilt Chamberlain. Something about big men and not being able to make free throws eh? The only Big Man who could make his shots consistently was Dirk Nowitzki, right from the inception of the NBA.

It was happenstance, but Big Shaq fell victim to a ploy that was known to be used for decades with varying effects – his free throw ability was the one that brought it to the limelight. If only he could make his free throws at least Patrick Ewing – coach Don Nelson of the Dallas Mavericks would have not exposed such a gaping hole in his incredible offensive arsenal.

But a rule change in 2016 finally curbed down this tactic to a great extent. Off-the-ball fouls in the last two minutes of the game were only 1 foul, and the offensive team would retain possession. A rule that exposed many greats finally took a change for the better.

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