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Van Gundy blames Silver for Drummond fouls

Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports / Reuters

Intentional fouling has always been an ugly blight of NBA basketball, but things got out of hand in Wednesday's game between the Detroit Pistons and Houston Rockets.

Andre Drummond, who's shooting an abysmal 35.5 percent from the charity stripe, toed the line 36 times and made 13. He broke an NBA record for most missed free throws (22), which DeAndre Jordan set earlier this season.

Pistons head coach Stan Van Gundy was rather frank when asked about the strategy after the game.

"(NBA commissioner) Adam Silver and the league, they've decided that's the way they want to play the game and that's what they want people to watch," Van Gundy told Vince Ellis of the Detroit Free Press. "As long as the fans are OK with watching it, then we'll continue to play that way.

"At some point the fans might get to the point and say, 'We're not going to pay to watch this. We're going to flip the channels.'

"They haven't yet. That's what Adam keeps saying. When they do, then the league will have to make an adjustment."

According to research compiled by ESPN's Kevin Pelton, the NBA is on course for over 400 cases of intentional fouling this season, which would obliterate the 277 instances from the 2014-15 campaign.

Silver, however, remains resistant to changing the rules.

"The data shows that we're largely talking about two teams, throughout the playoffs," he told reporters during the 2015 NBA Finals. "In fact, 90 percent of the occurrences of Hack-a-Shaq involve the Rockets and the Clippers, and for the most part, it's two players."

Drummond, however, has joined the dubious group, and on Wednesday, Rockets coach J.B. Bickerstaff took it to the extreme. At the outset of the second half, Bickerstaff called upon his 15th man to commit five fouls in nine seconds to force the Pistons into the penalty.

After all that embarrassment and needless delay, the Rockets still lost.

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