Andre Drummond was fouled on a consistent basis by the Boston Celtics during the second half of their 124-97 victory over the Chicago Bulls on Tuesday. This was done in an effort to maintain a point differential that was high enough for them to proceed to the quarterfinals of the in-season tournament.
However, Chicago head coach Billy Donovan was not pleased with the strategy of repeatedly hacking Drummond, and Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla apologized to both Donovan and Drummond after the game. The strategy was successful, as Boston won a three-team tiebreaker with the Brooklyn Nets and Orlando Magic, and they will be the third seed in the Eastern Conference. Their next opponent will be the Indiana Pacers, who are the second-seeded team in the conference.
Andre is a veteran, and I asked Mazzulla, “What are we doing here?” in response to his question. That is what Donovan said to the reporters after the game. “I understand why you want to keep your guys in the game and want to advance to the next round. This has been a major concern for the league. But [the Celtics] also, in order to be fair to them, have to deal with the regulations as well. It is necessary for them to fulfill certain requirements in order to be able to enter Las Vegas, which is the location where the semifinals and finals will be played. If I had to choose, it would be the fouling. At the time that I spoke with Joe, he was wonderful. It was clear to him.
Throughout the game, the Celtics sent Drummond to the free throw line for a total of six attempts, but he only managed to make one of them. At the beginning of the game, he had a career free throw percentage of 47.7 percent and a shooting percentage of 64.3 percent from the free throw line.
When two teams finished the season with the same record, head-to-head encounters were used as tiebreakers to determine which team would advance to the next round of the season tournament. However, for three clubs, both the point differential and the overall points became important measures of success.
On Tuesday, the Celtics entered the game with a plethora of tiebreaker scenarios from which they could choose to either win Group C or qualify as a Wildcard. A significant number of these situations took into account the point discrepancy between the two teams. In an effort to increase their score, the squad resorted to hacking a Drummond in order to gain an advantage.
It is difficult to believe that the National Basketball Association (NBA) will be pleased with such kinds of strategies, and if it wants to prevent them in the future, it may have to look at changing the framework of the In-Season Tournament.
The Celtics were well within their rights to go the route that they did, but it is not surprising that Donovan and a Bulls team that was already in the midst of a frustrating season—having lost eight of their last nine games and now just 5-14 overall, with a Zach LaVine trade on the horizon (and possibly a full roster reconstruction to follow)—were irritated by the selection of the strategy.
