That’s weird, because they only do it when they’re up and it’s towards the end of the game.
The problem with basketball (IMO, obviously) is that, other than a few baskets at the end if it’s close, none of the baskets really matter. It’s 44 minutes of back and forth, with nothing really making a difference, and then, only if it’s close, four minutes of stuff that matters. If it’s not close, the last four minutes also don’t matter.
I keep telling my friends that if they ever watched a basketball game where both coaches declined to call late timeouts (an extremely rare occurrence), they would demand that timeouts be disallowed in the last four minutes from now on.
It’s not just getting through the final minutes in a reasonable amount of time, it’s how the excitement grows to a fever pitch in a close game when the players are loosed to decide it.
Ah, we’re on to solving the problems of other sports now, are we? 
I agree, basketball is probably my favorite sport but the parade to the free throw line at the end of close games sucks. Seems like the simplest remedy would just be to run some time off the clock when the trailing team fouls late in games, thus defeating the purpose of fouling in order to stop the clock.
I’m here to make every sport better and I will bulldoze all those in my path. I’m on a mission from God.
It may be worth reflecting why soccer is such a popular game globally. You don’t need fancy equipment or expensive clothes or a membership in a snooty club. You can play it on any flat surface. It is not too aggressive, so being big or tall rather than fast offers less advantage than many other sports. It is a team sport, offering social fellowship. People love it, dream of it because they played it, wherever they lived, whether they were athletic or less so, and sports offer status and escape and entertainment.
The rules FIFA comes up with apply to every level of soccer. They might not have a big electronic scoreboard in the sandlots of Senegal, and they hardly need one. Keeping extra time is one small and easy job among many that referees perform well and easily. A special official is not needed. Anyone who wants to keep their own record of extra time on stopwatch mode can easily do so and the results will be very similar. Having many similar results add little but confusion.
I have referred many hundreds of soccer games. When someone was injured or was egregiously wasting time I would use the stopwatch on my Ironman watch to add time. It isn’t hard. Anyone at the game could do the same thing and the number would likely be close. What does it add to make this number more open? A decision of when to add time is still needed, plus fancy scoreboards may be rare in Cameroon or Colombian recreational games.
What confusion could that possibly lead to? And what if it turns out there’s a very large difference in some instances?
In fact the linesmen often keep this time too, as a check. When was the last time you heard of an aggrieved team, and they are not shy of complaining about referees, whine that the stoppage time was way off? The teams and coaches actually do often measure this, which is trivially easy to do, and know about how much time there is.
Over years I was called my share of epithets. Never heard anyone complain about extra time added. Is this a problem that really needs solving?
That’s actually what I was essentially proposing. Seems to be a perfectly fine solution.
As for the rest of the discussion, I think that one of the really nice about soccer as a spectator sport is the lack of timeouts and continuous play. I’d be really hesitant to make any changes that would lead to commercials - that way lies the madness of the MLB.
The linesmen (linespeople) understand there are occasional mechanical failures. But there are no huge mysteries regarding extra time - to any of the teams, coaches, players or spectators - which is mainly given when there is a player physically lying on the ground that stops play. You also give it for an exceptionally egregious attempt to waste time but this is often accompanied by a warning or penalty.
Here is a case where the ref blew the whistle for time basically as the goal was scored - or a split-second before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GuDd41DOYiM&ab_channel=Freekick
It was during the 1978 World cup. If that had happened today, the uproar, accusations of match-fixing etc would have been enormous.
Does your forty plus year old example have to do with the amount of added time? Because they announce it to both teams at the end of regular time, and have for many years. Sure, injuries and time wasting can occur afterwards so there is a little flexibility.
It seems to be more about my point about once you put a public countdown clock out there, the implication is that the game will end the second that the clock hits zero. But that could lead to game winning goals getting disallowed because the game ended a 1/10th of a second before the foot hit the ball.
I’ve been arguing about how this would be bad for the game. I never dreamed that there would be an actual example in live play, much less at the actual World Cup. Wow. That was terrible.
It wouldn’t be bad for the game if there was a precise game time that everyone could see. It’s only bad because it seems arbitrary.
As is obvious, I disagree. You say it wouldn’t be bad, I say it would be terrible.
“If we’d just had a little more time we woulda won” isn’t a very compelling argument to me.
Yeah, definitely. That’s why my kids’ games often had stoppages for VAR.
I mean, you’re arguing that it can’t work because they don’t have scoreboards in Senegal or whatever, but they don’t have VAR either, right?
Just because you’re keeping track of stoppages doesn’t mean the game is over exactly when the clock hits zero. That doesn’t happen in American football or Rugby.
That’s all I’m saying. I have no objection to a public clock, only a basketball-style “game ends instantly at zero” clock.
Totally agree with you there. Hockey is even quicker than basketball – at least you can get the score to count in bball if you release it before the end. In hockey, the puck has to be in the goal before the time gets to zero.
I think a better solution for basketball is to allow teams that are fouled late in the game to choose between taking free throws or inbounding the ball. This would eliminate a lot of long trips to the free-throw line.
VAR isn’t a FIFA rule.
Entirely incorrect. FIFA uses VAR at the World Cup level (at least), and they have rules for its use.