He did. They just didn’t get a chance to cleanly foul.
Then they should practice that. Which goes to show how unworkable the rules are, when it makes sense to practice breaking the rules in a way you don’t get away with.
In the video, it looks like he isn’t trying to foul, standing back, trying to slow him down, but not going in for a foul.
This makes it sound like 3-pointers just rain mana-like from the heavens. Down by 10 points with 1:30 left, if the winning team can make just 60% of their free throws, the losing team would have to make anywhere from 5-7 three pointers (in 90 seconds…without a single miss) to win the ballgame. If they can go 7/7 from the arc and the other team can’t even hit 3/4 from the charity stripe, the deserved winner here is obvious.
Put me into the “legit strategy” group. The intentional walk in baseball is usually not questioned. Nobody complains about a WR running out of bounds in a football game to stop the clock. In fact, clock management in football is considered an absolute necessity.
By the time the point guard got to midcourt, he had already mostly beaten his man. The defender was probably being careful to not get an intentional, but I think he did try to foul. Seems to me like a case of bad defense rather than bad strategy.
Nobody is breaking any rules in either of those examples.
Instead of the WR running out of bounds, compare apples to apples. If the offense was really pressed for time, they used to just run up to the line and immediately hike the ball without setting, generating a false start penalty. The clock stopped while the refs doled out the penalty and moved the ball back five yards. During this time the team could get together and call a play.
The NFL rightfully recognized this as a bullshit pussy tactic, and so legislated it out with the 10 second runoff. Now it doesn’t matter if the offense wants to stop the clock or not, and it doesn’t matter who is leading. If the offense commits a penalty while the clock is running with under a minute left, there is a 10 second runoff, period.
I understand all that, but why give the loosing team any control over how effective the offense of the winning team is in the final seconds other than an agressive and legal defense? If you couldn’t get the job done up till that point why should cheesy fouling and free throws decide the game?
Shoulda started the press a little sooner than with 60 seconds left in the game.
Because they have that right for the whole rest of the game. I’m not a big fan of having the rules change for different parts of games, although I recognize that it can be useful.
From the point of view of encouraging exciting games, allowing the fouling tactic is helpful. Without it, the games would just be over instead. From a “correctness” of result point of view I suppose that allowing the tactic might be bad.
Giving the offense the option to decline the free throws and just take the ball out of bounds would just make the problem worse. You’d get an even more boring sequence of inbounds-foul-inbounds-foul over and over, with only a second or two coming off the clock each time.
I doubt that, unless the team behind had 5 players on the floor who could afford to foul out in short order.
The fouling tactic already makes the end of the game unlike the rest of the game. Whereas the first 9/10 of the game is about playing relatively free-flowing basketball that prizes execution and teamwork, the last 1/10 of the game (if it’s close) devolves into a foul shot “exam” for the leading team.
Having said that, I’m coming to the realization that any solution proposed so far would cause additional problems, so there may be no way to effectively please people like myself who would like to see the game keep its flow through to the end.
It’s just frustrating to me. It means that if I want to see a free-flowing game that doesn’t have its last 2 minutes stretched out to 25 minutes by non-stop clock-stopping foul shots I have to hope for a blow-out so that the losing team won’t bother to foul deliberately.
Close games are doomed to become tedious, and in my opinion somewhat unfair, contests of foul shooting that take forever to resolve.
When someone who enjoys the game as much as I do is inclined to change channels at the end of a close contest, the game has a problem, IMO.
What additional problems would be caused by a 10-second runoff?
I find that viewpoint odd, because even if I don’t care much about the teams playing, I’ll always try to catch the end of a close game.
Did you find Monday’s game tedious and unfair? Saying it’s unfair to make a team make foul shots to win is like saying it’s unfair the losing team has to make three-pointers to even the score.
Well, it’s sort of like a hockey game coming down to a shoot-out. It’s an artifical facsimile of the game proper.
Well, for one, it wouldn’t stop end game fouling. It just would make it start earlier.
Or how bout this? A player gets a defensive rebound with 8 seconds left. His team is up by one. He should just be able to hold the ball for 8 seconds to win the game? Now that is an exciting finish.
The alternative is that they lose the game, so fouling out some guys to obtain even a small chance to win is good strategy.
I found the first 38 minutes of play to be wonderful, and a great matchup of teams with different styles and strengths. I found the last 2 minutes of regular time a tedious and bothersome example of “if you can’t beat 'em, foul 'em.”
That doesn’t follow at all. Teams that are trailing have to take more risks in every sport if they want to catch up. There’s nothing unfair about needing to drain 3-pointers in an attempt to even the score any more than there’s anything unfair about expecting a football team to throw down field when they’re trailing with little time.
And obviously it’s important to make foul shots in basketball – but that’s because foul shots give an offensive player who’s been fouled in the act of shooting a chance to fairly make his points.
But they aren’t intended to be a substitute for regular offensive play. Not allowing the “ahead” team to play offense, and instead making every offensive possession for that team a series of foul shots that a) stop the clock, b) prevent them from scoring 3-pointers themselves, and c) force that team to use foul shots as their sole source of scoring, is lame, IMO.
Dude, the clock does eventually have to run out, the game has to end, and someone has to win. Why shouldn’t it be the team that has scored more points in the course of regular play instead of the team with the better foul shooters? I don’t see what’s less exciting about that.
That’s unfortunate for you, but I don’t know what else to say about it. I think the rest of us saw a very exciting game conclusion. Especially since Kansas only fouled, what, four times?
And fouling is a risk - one that usually doesn’t work. When the offense doesn’t make their shots, it hurts them, just like missing threes hurts the trailing team late in the game.
Yes, but one is an “in-game”* skill and the other is not.
It would be like in the NFL, while the offense was kneeling on the ball to run out the clock, the defense is allowed to jump offsides triggering a long FG attempt followed by possession. Sure, it would be more exciting than kneeling down, but it would be a perversion of the game.
- Term used loosely
I have an idea. Instead of fouls giving two free throws followed by a change of possession or a rebound, have them give one one free throw and retained possession. (Rebounds don’t mean anything.) This would be for the entire game, not just the final minutes.
That way, instead of a chance at one or two – or the ultra-rare 1-miss-rebound-basket three-pointer, the aggrieved team has a chance at one (as penalty) and then the game “resets” back to them having the ball.
This would also help reduce the importance of free throws in general, which I think would be good.