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New York • Imagine Kobe Bryant, late in his final All-Star Game, going basket for basket with LeBron James, fans in Toronto on their feet as the NBA's best put on a show.

Suddenly, nowhere near the action, a Western Conference player wraps his arms around Detroit's Andre Drummond for an intentional foul.

OK, that's farfetched. Nobody has ever been accused of overthinking defensive strategy in the All-Star Game.

But Hack-a-Shaq critics worry that it is going to be used in an important game with a big crowd watching — and eventually those fans won't watch anymore.

"Somebody is going to do this in a nationally televised game. There's going to be two bad free throw shooters and we're going to see guys, like, grabbing people 80 feet away from the basket," ABC analyst Jeff Van Gundy said.

It was nearly that bad Wednesday in Houston, where the Rockets sent Drummond to the foul line 36 times. He set a record by missing 23, yet the Pistons won the game anyway.

The whole scene essentially summed up Hack-a-Shaq: It's unattractive, and it's also largely ineffective.

Teams intentionally fouling away from the ball have won only 56 percent of the time this season when utilizing the strategy when they had the lead, according to the NBA. Teams trailing, as the Rockets were Wednesday, have won 17 percent of the time.

Yet coaches see it as a way to get a dominant big man like Drummond, Houston's Dwight Howard or the Clippers' DeAndre Jordan off the floor, or at least slow down the rhythm of their high-powered offenses.

That's why there remains little movement to change it. That was true when general managers met in May and again when coaches gathered in September. There was little support among either for changing the rule, nor has there been any from Commissioner Adam Silver.

"Adam Silver and the league, they decided that's the way they want to play the game and that's what they want people to watch. So as long as fans are OK with watching it, then we'll continue to play that way," said Pistons coach Stan Van Gundy, who also coached Howard in Orlando.

If the NBA did want to abolish it, there are a number of options, such as giving the player that was fouled two shots and allowing his team to keep possession, or for his team to decline the free throws and just take the ball out of bounds.

Clippers coach Doc Rivers is on the competition committee that didn't recommend any rules change, but now he is thinking otherwise.

"I was against it, honestly, because it's only seven guys or eight guys, but it is getting more and more," he said Thursday. "It's bad for the league. It looks bad and we're going to have to adopt something here, I think."