It does eliminate buzzer beating wins, but instead you ALWAYS get an exciting win. As soon as one team is one shot away from winning, every shot they take is crazy exciting.
Right. So why should that only happen once per match? If the clock doesnât matter when the most dramatic moment happens, why have one at all?
Once start going down this route, you end up playing basketball with tennis scoring methods, with points, games, sets and matches, with each moment being more or less dramatic depending on how close to the end of a game, set, or match it happens. Iâm not against that, but tennis doesnât have a clock. One thing that sets basketball apart from tennis is the clock. Iâd want to keep the clock.
Because in the interest of spectators, broadcasters, and advertisers you want every game to be roughly the same exact length.
This is also babyâs first step in that direction. All the pro leagues are⌠change averse. Tennis scoring for basketball might be cool, or maybe not, but jumping straight there has 0% chance. This might have 1%.
I donât want tennis scoring, except for the idea of sets.
As Iâve said earlier: Play for 5 minutes of clock, no timeouts, no substitutions per set, best score at the end of 5 minutes wins the set, first to 7 sets wins the whole game. Tied sets will have 90 seconds of extra time added to the clock. Blowouts will last 35 minutes of play time, close games will be longer, like extra overtimes. Eliminate intentional fouls by increasing the points for each shot, so in the end intentional fouling could put a team 6 points down.
This would allow for meaningful buzzer beating plays up to 13 times per game, and more if a buzzer beater ties a set.
Sure, that might be awesome. But the actual NBA is never going for it. The Elam Ending has a nonzero chance of happening.
Whatâs interesting is that the big sports arenât averse to change because they donât want to change, or are afraid fans will reject the change. They are first and foremost worried it will cost them money with advertisers, tv networks, etc. Thatâs priority 1, and partially keeping the clock solves that problem.
The second thing they are worried about is their labor contract. This is why change in baseball is hard to come by. The baseball union is the strongest, and often fights for good things. However, it also fights for things that are in the interests of the players, but against the interest of baseball. They want to put pitchers on a clock so they have to hurry up and throw the damn ball. Union is the major, and perhaps only, reason that hasnât happened yet. The pitchers themselves donât want to be hurried.
The last reason is legacy. If you change the rules of a game too significantly, ti becomes harder and harder to compare achievements of current players to those of the past. How many home runs someone hit before/after the fences got moved in. How many points someone scored before/after the 3 point shot was added to the game.
How many triple doubles someone gets in basketball is a thing people care about. Will they be harder to get when games are shorter? Easier to get if the clock goes away when your team has a huge lead?
After thinking about it more, I think one thing I would change about the Elam Ending is to make it so one team has to win by at least 2. If the target score is 80 and I have 79 and my opponent has 78, they shouldnât win when reaching 80. They should have to have at least 2 more points than I do. That way if teams are within a single point of each other, they go back and forth until someone gets two in a row. Otherwise at the time in the game when one team has 79 and the other has 78, they effectively have the same score. The team that scored that one extra point effectively has it erased from the board, and thatâs not fair.
2 Likes
A single point difference is still meaningful. A free throw could tie without ending it. Also a 3 would still end the game either way.
I would rather the current ending than a non-clock based ending.
Right. You are just rediscovering tennis scoring.
True. I think ending on a 3 is ok. Itâs a three!
Ending on a free throw always sucks, and I think is a good argument for forcing someone to win by at least two. That way you can only end the game on a free throw if you are already ahead. Two teams tied one point away from the target wonât end the game with a free throw, which would be extremely dissatisfying.
Also have to keep in mind that other major problem of basketball is the same subjectivity in refereeing we see in soccer. Star players get all the foul calls. Refs will swallow the whistle depending on the situation. Happens in hockey too, but less so.
How will the Elam Ending effect the behavior of refs? Are you going to call a foul when the foul shot could end the game? What if itâs the NBA Finals game 7? Are you just going to let everyone foul like crazy at the end because you donât want to blow the whistle?
Keep What You Kill: in a tournament, the victor can take 1/several/any players from the team they beat.
Isnât this baseball?
I donât know what baseball tournaments youâre watching with teams stealing players from the losers.
But it would work well with baseball - you can pretty much plug in a new guy anywhere any time. Not so easy with e.g. a quarterback.
Golf, but with punting.
Right. I saw people playing rugby golf in the park today. Looked pretty much like that at points.
Exactly what I was thinking. Is this already a thing? How big was the cup?
Most non-golf golf Iâve seen uses a target and not a hole to put the ball into. In this case they had to hit a bin. They rotated around dropkicking the ball, throwing it and kicking it.
Chess, but the king has 2hp. You can win 2-0 or 1-0, draws are 0.5-0.5.
1 Like