The OP refers to “breaking the rules,” which implies some sort of cheating is occurring, which, by definition, is unfair. Fouling is not cheating. Fouling is not unfair. It is a completely valid and viable strategy. You foul, the other team gets the opportunity to extend their lead with free throws, and you stop the clock and get a reasonable chance to regain possession of the ball.
Even is that’s not relevant as you say, your solution is to allow the fouled team to decline the penalty and then what-- retain possession? That would be unfair. They get free throws to extend their lead. Why would they possibly decline? A foul stops the clock no matter what. Why even have a clock? Let’s just play first to score 50 baskets and be done with it? That’s not basketball. That’s some little-kid playground shit.
Doesn’t the fact that foul limits are in place negate this entire argument? And if not “negate” then “seriously undermine”? Maybe the argument should be, for rationality’s sake, to reduce the number of fouls an individual can accummulate before being ejected from the game.
See, the problem with a lot of the solutions being proposed in this thread is that they are designed to address one specific situation - where one team is behind by so much but not too much with a limited amount of time left in the game - without accounting for the many, many games in which this situation does not arrive, games that would be hurt by these rule changes.
Take the one above. The NBA foul limit is currently six. To what do you propose reducing it? To five? This wouldn’t really have an impact. Most NBA teams have eleventh and twelfth men that rarely play, who could easily be trained to foul quickly and inserted into the game in a desperation situation to soak up fouls. Want to cut it to four? Well, this might affect the specific situation under discussion. It would also affect every game. Kobe Bryant has not fouled out one single time in 2010. Cut the number of allowed fouls to four, and he’d have fouled out fifteen times. So that’s fifteen games in which the best player on the best team in the league isn’t around for crunch time. You think that would affect fan interest in even the ostensibly exciting games, and in the league overall? And of course, it would dramatically change the way that teams play. With only four fouls available to the marquee players, those marquee players would basically just stop playing defense altogether. Opposing teams would run play after play right at Kobe or LeBron or whoever, gambling that they can force a foul-out by the fourth quarter and gain a huge advantage. Does that sound like a fun game to watch?
What else?
Allow free throws to be declined in favor of possession? OK, go ahead, but it won’t have any practical impact, because as has already been noted, the fouled team is never going to prefer making four or five or six risky inbounds plays instead of just putting the ball in the hands of a player to take two shots at 80% likelihood of success.
Make two fouls in the last two minutes an automatic ejection? OK, but it won’t work - guys 7-12 on the roster will just rotate in, and get ejected in sequence, and the problem doesn’t go away. Also, you risk ejecting Dwight Howard in the last minute of a very close game because he picked up two quick fouls (not impossible, and much more likely if this rule is instituted, motivating opposing teams to run plays right at Howard hoping to get him booted).
Automatic run-off of the remainder of the play clock any time there’s a foul? Well, your scores are going to drop, probably significantly, but I guess that’s not that big of a deal (you will lose even a tenuous ability to compare statistics between the pre-rule and post-rule eras, but omelette, eggs, etc). But you’re also going to have a lot of exciting games end like this: “And here comes Williams, Jazz up by one, twenty two seconds remaining. Williams with the stutter step, Paul goes for the steal - and a reach-in foul by Chris Paul! So… uh… by rule, that’s the end of the game!” I really don’t think this situation would lead to more exciting endings, do you?
Look, close games are the NBAs bread-and-butter. Nobody would become a fan of professional basketball because that 81-71 snoozer between the Knicks and Raptors ended slightly more quickly and with somewhat less fuss. But the rule changes proposed here would have a significant negative impact on all those games that are contested intensely into the final seconds - and THOSE are the games that actually make people fans. It’s not a worthwhile trade-off.
IIRC, some years ago the NCAA experimented with a rule in the preseason tournaments where a team in the bonus could elect to take the free throws or simply inbound the ball. The idea was it would cut down on the fouls at the end of the game, but it didn’t help at all.
I’d like to see fouls continue until the possession is over - much like hockey and lacrosse (and even football, in a sense). If a team is fouled, play doesn’t stop, and if the possession results in a basket, award a +1 like on shooting fouls today.
I hear what you’re saying, but the NFL is way more popular than the NBA and games ending with kneel-downs are commonplace. Doesn’t seem to hurt fan interest one bit. What happens is the play right before the kneeldowns become the exciting last efforts of the game.
From my perspective, it reinforces the idea that there is a problem in the first place, otherwise why is there a foul limit?
I remember back in 2005 when the Giants travelled to Seattle and just barely lost because Jay Feely missed 3 game winners at the end of regulation and in overtime. During that game, the Giants racked up like 15 penalties, 5 of which were false starts by Luke Petitgout. Of course there was never an issue of him being ejected by the refs, nor should there. Why is it so in basketball?
I suppose you could say contact fouls are a different animal, but substitue pass interference and the argument holds. You can get flagged for pass interference (or holding) as many times as you like without worry of being ejected by the officials.
Hockey is the same was as football, right? Get as many 2:00 penalties as you please, the refs won’t eject you. I’m pretty sure, at least.
That’s the disconnect. In basketball, the penalties aren’t enough of a disincentive to prevent rule-breaking, necessitating a whole extra layer of punishment to be rigidly encoded. That seems like a failure of the rules. Especially at the end of the game, when the losing team has incentive to foul. Nobody should ever have incentive to foul.
To use another example from the NFL, at the end of the game, if the losing team has the ball they have incentive to incur minor penalties like false start to stop the clock between plays. That’s a failure in the rules. To fix it the NFL institued a 10-second runoff. (For those who don’t follow NFL football: If you have the ball in the final minute of regulation and commit any penalty that stops the clock, 10 seconds is run off the game clock.)
How about variation of the 10-second runoff? I don’t know enough about basketball to flesh it out completely, but how about if you don’t have the ball, you’re losing, and it’s the final minute, if you commit a foul there’s a 10-second runoff. Everything else stays the same. I’m just spitballing here; any thoughts from the basketball afficianados?
The one change i would be in favor of would be raising the number of fouls a player can get in a game to 8 and making intentional fouls count double. Too many games are influenced by a good player having to sit for large stretches because he picked up a couple ticky tack fouls early so this would limit the effect a bad call has on the game while still penalizing players who foul intentionally.
I think a bigger issue is just that officiating is so damn inconsistent. You’ll have games where a good player has to sit out a majority of the first half of a game due to picking up two quick ticky-tack fouls, and then you’ll have some games where people are getting their noses broken under the basket and no fouls are called.
That’s why i think more leeway is needed. Giving people eight fouls would make bad referees less of an issue, while making intentional fouls count double would make them less appealing than they are now since you would have the equivalent of four fouls to give rather than six per player.
To determine whether a foul is intentional is not as easy as it sounds. Players at the end of the game are simply playing aggressive defense, and not necessarily trying to foul. They probably don’t care if a foul is a by-product of their aggressive defense, but they may legitimately attempting a steal, strip or block.
You’re against the new NFL overtime rule because you think the team that loses the toss should just man up and play some D, yet in basketball you’re willing to let the team with the lead that is getting sent to the free throw line avoid having to play defense to preserve that lead.
It’s not a flaw or a loophole. It forces the team with the lead to play good, fundamental basketball. If they pass the ball well, rebound, hit their foul shots, and hustle, they’ll hold their lead.
I disagree. Judging intent is very difficult. Especially if it something like, go for the steal and if I foul the guy, oh well. I don’t like any rule that requires refs to make mental judgments as to what the players were thinking.
