The Rockets and Thunder were engaged in a thrilling basketball game until a free throw shooting contest broke out during the fourth quarter.

With 4:11 on the clock, the Rockets began intentionally fouling Andre Roberson, who shot 42.3 percent from the free throw line this season. Roberson missed both shots, so the Rockets did it again. And again. And once more.

In four trips, Roberson shot 2-of-8 on those free throws and is now 2-of-17 in this series. Free throws, in fact, are not always free.

The Thunder took Roberson out with 3:01 left in the fourth quarter, subbing him back in after the two-minute mark, where that strategy can’t be used. Oklahoma City wasn’t able to play its best perimeter defender because he couldn’t put a basketball through the hoop from 15 feet away. As a viewer, our thrilling back-and-forth sport was instead replaced with professional athletes standing around watching set shots. They stood there very athletically, though.

It was compelling in the sense that it was a train wreck.

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But it wasn’t basketball, and that’s a problem.

Free throws have always been a punishment for breaking the NBA’s rules, but in the past years, hacking bad shooters has turned the penalty shot into an advantage. It’s certainly not why we watch basketball. Ideally, the sport is a free-flowing, end-to-end product with constant motion and infrequent breaks in action. Intentional fouling directly undermines that goal.

Don’t blame Mike D’Antoni for using the strategy. He waited as long as he could to break out the strategy, and fouling Roberson helped his team win the game.

Don’t blame Andre Roberson. For some reason, he can’t shoot free throws, and that will always be a weakness in his game. It’s not because he doesn’t work on it during every practice and shootaround. It’s not the fault of the hundreds of hours he has spent working to become a better shooter.

In fact, Roberson used to be a better shooter. He hit 70 percent as a rookie before falling off the next season. This is as much mental as it is physical.

No, this is the NBA’s fault, and they’ve let this loophole remain open too long. Two years ago, a rule change was proposed but didn’t pass at the Board of Governor’s meeting. Last summer, the league extended the final two-minute rule to every quarter, not just the fourth, but it was a half measure that still leaves open the most egregious version of the strategy.

Basketball fans are entrenched both ways on this issue, and this article probably won’t change that.

Yes, if you’re opening your email account to send me a scathing paragraph about why intentional fouls should not be banned, I get it. I’ve heard the argument a hundred times before.

In your opinion, free throw shooting is just another weakness. If a player is too small to defend his player in the post, then teams try to exploit that. If a player can’t shoot threes, his defender won’t guard him out to the perimeter. The solution seems so simple: just shoot free throws better. If you stop intentional fouling, then are you also going to prevent players from exploiting other weaknesses? Or so the argument goes.

But free throw shooting doesn’t happen within the flow of the game, and that changes everything. We shouldn’t allow free throws to be weaponized into a strategy that is unpleasant to watch and makes a game drag on even longer. Ideally, any given NBA game should be played with as few free throws (and fouls) as possible.

We also need to accept that poor free throw shooting isn’t something a player can fix easily. It’s easy to joke that a high schooler could shoot free throws better than someone like Roberson or DeAndre Jordan, but I doubt that’s the reality. In practice, these players can knock down a dozen free throws in a row. In my first NBA game ever, I vividly remember watching Brendan Haywood hit nine in a row while on the court 90 minutes before a game. That season, he shot just 47 percent from the line.

There are any number of factors for that — fatigue, pressure, crowd noise, arena atmospheres, and so on. If all it really took was more practice, why would Dwight Howard, a 57 percent career foul shooter, be hitting only 53 percent this season? Or DeAndre Jordan, career 43 percent, just 48 this season? Many bad free throws shooters go through several shot doctors and hundreds of hours, and it works in practice. In a game, though, it just doesn’t translate.

We know that bad free throw shooting will always be a part of the game, and that there’s no magic fix. For players who can’t hit them, their problems aren’t going away — they’ll still have to take attempts from the line any time they get fouled during the normal course of play. (That’s why the “but what about the children” argument makes no sense.)

But there’s also no reason to allow teams to artificially create more of those instances at the viewer’s own cost. We pay money to see players perform marvelously with the ball in their hands, and free throwing shooting isn’t one of those things.

How can the NBA fix this?

This is the easiest part. In the final two minutes, players who are intentionally fouled off the ball shoot one free throw, and then that team gets the ball back. If the NBA changes the rule this summer, this is probably how they will do it.

You could also allow the team that is fouled to choose a shooter, like you can on technical fouls, though this feels like an overly complicated solution.

Another option is one shared by former Cavaliers head coach David Blatt, who explained that intentional fouling just isn’t allowed overseas. This would put the onus on the referees.

David Blatt says that Hack-a-whomever is not allowed overseas. His explanation makes a lot of sense. pic.twitter.com/g2JM9m1wJL — Dave McMenamin (@mcten) May 3, 2015

Our own Tom Ziller has the easiest fix of them all: give teams the choice between free throws or a side out of bounds when intentionally fouled off the ball. That, too, would quell this habit instantly.

Regardless, it’s time for a change. We invented basketball and its rules, and we decided it was enjoyable. We’re the ones who spend money and waste hours in our finite lives devoted to this game. We choose to emotionally attach ourselves to what happens to our favorite players and teams. Banning Hack-a-Shaq isn’t rewriting the Bible; it’s a way to improve something we already love dearly.

That’s a good thing.