Anti-Hack-a-Shaq Rule Apparently Not Coming

INDIANAPOLIS —  Dear Shaq: You’re on your own in this one. Sincerely, David Stern.

The NBA commissioner, who had suggested he might ask the league’s competition committee to change the rules to discourage intentional fouling--as in Game 2 of this series when Indiana Pacer Coach Larry Bird put Shaquille O’Neal on the free-throw line 39 times--reversed himself and said Monday that things will stay the way they are.

“We like the rule changes [now in effect],” Stern said during his annual news conference at the NBA finals. “We’re not planning to rush out and enact some Hack-a-Shaq antidote.”

Said Deputy Commissioner Russ Granik: “I think our feeling is that we’ve had a couple of games--I guess in the Portland series and the one in this series, where there was a lot of deliberate fouling. But our feeling is that that’s a strategy the two teams [the Pacers and Portland Trail Blazers] employed, I think, at least thus far, without great success

“When we met last week with the competition committee and with the coaches, there was absolutely no discussion of the subject. There really was no interest.”