When I hear reference to Hack a Shaq these days, it's the "soft" intentional foul that is now popular in the NBA to put poor free throw shooters on the line. However, I think (?) the origin was back at LSU when teams would have 2-3 guys hammering him in the paint and "earning" their fouls. Of course, this continued during his NBA career. Is my recollection correct? When did he start getting intentionally fouled in the NBA for strategic reasons? His entire career or sometime later?
Shaq was definitely getting intentionally fouled while at LSU, but the "Hack-a-Shaq" phrase didn't come up until he was in the NBA.
From hard fouls or the soft intentional fouls? Did the soft intentional fouls begin right away as a rookie in Orlando or later? It's amazing that he held up that well for that long with so much abuse, including three full years of playoff games with the added cheap shots.
At LSU, it seemed like the fouls started easy, but got harder later. In the beginning, he was just so much bigger and stronger than the guys trying to guard him that it took a hard foul for the refs to even notice it. Then later, when it became clear that he could take a soft foul and still score, they started outright grabbing him to make sure he got a 2-shot foul and not a 3-point opportunity. Frustration with him just being unstoppable later turned hard fouls into flagrant fouls, culminating in the Carlos Groves fiasco that led to Dale Brown's tirade and recommendation that Shaq leave early. In the NBA, I felt, the fouling was intentional, but never got close to the abuse he took in the SEC. Maybe because players knew if intentional became flagrant, they'd get hit in the wallet.
Intentional fouls to get him to shoot free throws. I remember it often when with the Lakers don't recall if started before then.
I just Googled the subject line and this thread was already the 3rd hit. The 1st was Wikipedia and mentioned that Don Nelson started it with Dennis Rodman. Also mentioned that Shaq had fallen to 38% in 2001 and had the Eddie P. dude from LSU work with him for the rest of the year. Shaq showed huge improvement and went 13-13 in the regular season finale. He stopped working with Eddie after that and went back to his old ways. His explanation to Dale in that special was pretty funny and likely a big reason for his struggles.
Shaq lacked the discipline to be consistent. He was obviously capable looking at his numbers after working with Palubinskis. Look at Kareem's career numbers. 6712 for 9304. His first 3 years in the league he was in the high .600's and finished the last 17 years never dropping below .700. But he worked at it all the time precisely because he got hacked pretty good too.
Regarding the discipline, that is a common opinion and there may be some truth to it. On the other hand, he was not a natural basketball player as a teenager (as often detailed in the Dale Brown story), gained a huge amount of muscle that allowed him to withstand the punishment (which takes continued discipline), and came from a family that enforced discipline. He also made sure to go back and finish his degree. He also came into the league with guys like Hakeem, Ewing, and Robinson in their primes and an overall deep Center position. He left with only Hakeem having an argument for best of that era. Now Stanley Roberts, that's what I'd label discipline issues.
I heard a story once that when Shaq was about 11 or 12 he fell out of a tree and broke his right wrist. Because of his injury he was unable to cock his wrist back and get a good rotation on his free throws. If this is true I wonder if he ever considered shooting them left handed.
Oliver Miller was pretty bad at it too. despite poor FT% resulting in Hack a Shaq, he has the record for consecutive FTs in a ncaa tourney game.
