Idle thought I just had: Would Basketball be a better sport if it was played toward a point limit (say, 80 if you MUST have a game take 40+ minutes) instead of time limit?
All fixes to Basketball scoring just make it more and more like tennis scoring. So yeah, that could work.
Pretty much any pickup game is played to score. So many people already are!
The has been buzz in recent years in the NBA about “the Elam Ending,” a hybrid solution.
The game is played normally until the first whistle under 3 minutes. Then the clock is turned off, and the first team to (leading team’s score) + 7 wins.
I like it because it’s radical. I don’t like it because it removes time pressure.
Right. I really like the time pressure and the buzzer beating shots that decide the match.
I’d get rid of the technical fouling by increasing the value of the free throw shots for each foul in the last two minutes (so an intentional foul will result in two three point free throws). Then play for periods of five minutes, like games in tennis. First to seven “games” wins the match. The closer the result, the more periods of play needed, and up to 13 opportunities for buzzer beating shots.
It combines the time pressure of basketball with the “first to a set score” of tennis.
I really like most of that, but I think best of 9 would be better. Current regulation NBA game is 48 minutes, and I want it shorter, honestly. Why lengthen up to 65?
And 2x3 free throws is crazy talk.
Best of nine means a match may only last 25 minutes total. That is too short for a single match.
Tennis can get away with that, as there are usually two to five matches in a single session/ticket, so a blowout isn’t much of a letdown. 25 minutes of basketball isn’t enough when there is only one match scheduled.
I think it might not be. If the Rockets are playing the Knicks, it could be over at half, and now there’s 24 minutes of garbage time anyway.
But that doesn’t matter, because now you can schedule 4 team double headers!
Rym told me something interesting about Overwatch League. They play best of 5, with a catch. Even if one team sweeps the first three games, they still play game 4 even if it’s not necessary. Game 5, however, will be skipped if not necessary. This means that matches will all have a minimum length and never be too short. Also, if an unnecessary game is played, the things that happen in that game could still matter for the regular season standings tiebreakers, so it’s still meaningful.
Pretty low risk of someone getting hurt in an extra Overwatch game.
In test cricket they do a best of five matches to decide the winner, but always play all five even if one team wins the first three. The last two matches count just as much to the player and team stats as the first three, even if they don’t determine the winner of the series.
What if it worked like this. You meet up with a team and play X games/sets/matches against them. Whatever. Each one you win gets you a point. They all count equally.
At the end of the season you determine who goes to the playoffs simply based on the number of points a team has. There’s no official single “winner” for a single game night. But still, if your team wins all or most of the games, you’re going to feel like they won. Better yet, if your team wins just one, you’ll still feel a little better.
Once it’s playoff time just change it up to strict best of X to have a tournament.
In tennis some bigger matches are five set not three set matches. In regular season they could do best of nine but always play at least seven. In the post season they could do best of eleven or thirteen but stop at the moment of victory.
You could also add up games over several nights.
For example, right now the NBA plays best of 7 series in the playoffs. Instead of that have 7 nights of 5 games each. First team to win 18 of the 35 total games moves on. Math still works out the same You still get at least 4 nights. The only problem is that in a complete sweep, that fourth night might be short. Even worse, let’s say a team going into the sixth or seventh night is just one game away, that could be a VERY short experience.
This is confusing different levels of victory.
In tennis you win points, games, sets, matches and tournaments. Each one should matter in itself and count only towards the next one. Not the one after that.
The worst event of the year in tennis are the end of year finals, where there are group stages, and sets and games count as tie breaks to get to the semi finals. Everyone HATES it.
Some of the excitement of hockey is the pressure to WIN THAT GAME RIGHT THE HELL NOW. Everything else is secondary.
The NBA should have fewer games:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=222&v=ivp_ToedC78
“Nobody can tell you — not the NBA scheduler, those who work in the NBA offices in New York, nor historians of the game — why the NBA settled on an 82-game schedule, one they’ve maintained for more than 50 years. Even though the best science has persuaded NBA teams to routinely hold out their best talent, while players and fans widely regard the regular season as an interminable preamble to the exciting postseason, the NBA bows to a tradition whose origins are a mystery as the guiding authority. It’s time to consider everything we know about the physical demands of the NBA, the current state of the entertainment marketplace, and the basic laws of scarcity (about which the NFL can teach us a thing or two), and lead a substantive conversation about what would constitute the smartest and most compelling NBA schedule.”
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Arnovitz is one of the best NBA writers. I’ve been wishing for a shorter season for a while, so it’s great to have national writers start banging the drum too. I just wish they would be more radical!
30 teams → 29 other teams → 1 home and away against each = 58 game schedule. Make it happen Adam Silver!
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I also like the idea of some kind of mid-year tournament and another tournament for the 7th and 8th seed playoff spots.
It’s true the season should be shorter, even though it would have a lot of consequences.
That being said, I don’t buy the player health argument. As he said, they’ve been playing 82 game seasons since the late '60s. This was not a problem for any players or teams until relatively recently. When did Greg Popovich start holding out the aging stars on the Spurs? A decade ago-ish? Michael Jordan played all 82 games, tried to win, and was elite every night. LeBron can only in top form twice a week? I guess there’s no room for debate on who the GOAT is then.
I also don’t buy his argument that you’ll get extra years out of players. Yeah, playing more games might put a strain on the body, but so does the undefeated father time.
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First, basically every (basketball) injury rate is correlated with playing more minutes, and especially playing games on back-to-back days. So it’s real.
Second, everyone plays way harder now. I can’t find it now, but some time ago I saw a montage of Jordan playoff highlights compared with LeBron playoff highlights.
You know how videos of Gretzky look like him skating around 5 dudes standing still, and then the goalie is just dude in a sweatshirt hunched over?
Yeah.
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