Wilt would run away from people, and the league changed the rule based on how silly that looked. —Pat Riley Hack-a-Shaq Nelson's innovation There are several late-game situations where committing an isolated intentional foul makes sense. For a team trailing, late in the game, stopping the clock is a higher priority than keeping the opponents from scoring. In other situations, intentional fouling does not make sense because it typically lets the opponents score more points. Intentional fouling every time the opponents get the ball was an innovation of Don Nelson in the late 1990s as coach of the Dallas Mavericks. He theorized that, if the opponents played an especially bad free throw shooter, intentionally fouling him might hold down his team's points per possession, compared to a conventional defense against them. Nelson used the strategy throughout the game, when the late-game penalties for off-the-ball fouls did not apply, such as the ball being given back to the fouled team. Nelson did not invent the strategy; his innovation was to take a strategy whose primary purpose had always been simply stopping the clock, and use it instead primarily to minimize the opposition's scoring. Hack-a-Rodman Nelson first used the strategy against Dennis Rodman of the Chicago Bulls in 1997, who was making 38% of his free throws on the season. He could not use the strategy on every Bulls possession, as a player committing his sixth foul is disqualified from the game. He used the strategy selectively, and chose a little-used player, whose absence the team could tolerate, to commit the fouls. He believed that Rodman's horrific foul shooting would result in the Mavericks actually giving up fewer total points during those Bulls possessions than they would give up by playing a standard defense against the Bulls' efficient offense, led by Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen. In that game, Rodman shot 9-for-12 from the free throw line, defeating the strategy, and the Bulls won the game. The strategy was thus largely forgotten, except that Maverick player Bubba Wells, who had been assigned to foul Rodman, set the all-time NBA record for fewest minutes played (3) before fouling out of a game. Nelson used the strategy again in 1999, this time against Shaquille O'Neal, a career 52% free throw shooter. Other NBA coaches also did so to defend against O'Neal. So, even though it had been first used two years earlier against Rodman,