You’ve all probably seen it: Basketball, or Football. Less then a minute on a clock. 30 seconds even. The losing team is behind by at least 3 touchdowns, or 6-7 baskets. Yet the coaches keep calling time-outs, rotating players in and out, coming up with complex plays and movements on their market boards. Despite there being no possible way to really make up for the lost points. Is it just for dramatic effect? To stall? Drag the game out?
Most teams down by a lot might use a complex play just to see how it works. Of course they are also going against the 2nd or 3rd string defense at that time.
There’s also an element of no quitting until the game is over. I’ve been involved in bad teams where the coach quits with 2 minutes left in one game, then a few games later the players give up with 4 minutes left, and then the coach with 10. There’s a psychological effect to we play the game until the end.
Actually, that’s often not true when there is a large discrepancy in the score. In basketball, in the age of the 3-pointer, a 12 point lead isn’t nearly as big as it used to be. Teams will often play down to the last half minute before relenting. There is also the machismo factor of fighting till the end. Coaches don’t want to appear passive or weak.
prior to the 3 point shot UNC was down 8 with 17 seconds left to Duke and tied the game and won in OT. that was in the mid 70s and people still talk about it today. That was before K was coach at Duke.
Fans usually don’t want to see their team give up. If the deficit is sufficiently large, you might see even the team that’s behind put in some back ups to reduce injury risks, but they’ll still often be managing the clock, and doing most of the things you would do in a closer game.
If it’s theoretically possible to, in football, e.g., do an onside kick, score, do another onside kick, etc. and come out on top, then fans want to see them try, and players may want coaches to show confidence in them. Once it’s clearly out of reach they still may want the score to be closer, so as to be less humiliating, even, as mentioned, if they are scoring on the leading team’s backup defense.
Also if a coach wants to keep his job he can’t let management get the impression he’s a quitter.
if the score is very lopsided the losing team will likely also put in their 2nd string offense to avoid injuries to the first string.
Time to experiment. A meaningless laboratory to try out those plays.
Yes, it’s called garbage time, at least in basketball. But it gives the backups significant actual game time, which, no matter how intense the practice, is always better than practice. And since the backups may be the starters in the future, you want them to have as much game time as they can get.
In football, it’s not impossible to make up a two score deficit in a very short amount of time with a few well placed timeouts, spikes, sideline plays, and an onside kick. It may look insurmountable to you but it’s not really. Certainly it has happened enough times that it’s worth it to try.
I expect that you are wrong that there’s no possible way to win from those scenarios. The chance to win might be very small, but nonzero.
I don’t know about basketball, but it takes about 10 seconds of game time to score a touchdown off an onside kick in the absolute best case, which means that the best-case scenario for 20 seconds of game clock and one timeout is something like interception/fumble-recovery for touchdown (8s), 2-point conversion, onside kick recovery (5s), timeout, touchdown (6s) 2-point conversion. Onside kick recovery and score on the same play, 2-point conversion, gaining slightly over one point per second of game time.
Now, the odds of that are really low. But they’re not zero. Each of those plays has happened individually. Stringing them together could happen too. Play to your outs.
sometimes a score (or scores) in garbage time can change the final point spread even though the game winner was not in doubt. That could have a big impact on the sports books.
Which is one reason why they don’t allow coaches and players to bet on sports, especially their own game.
[Moderating]
Moving to the Game Room.
The 49ers-Falcons game this year had the Falcons down 22-17 with only a few minutes left, after giving up a field goal when the score was 19-17. They had to drive down the field and score a touchdown and did, going up 23-22 with the 6 point gain. They wanted to pad the lead enough that a subsequent 3 point field goal from the Niners could only tie, not win, so went for the 2 point conversion and failed. This left only 2 seconds on the clock.
The Falcons kicked off to the Niners but though time quickly expired the game doesn’t end until the play does. The Niners tried to keep the play alive to advance the ball down to score a touchdown but in the process fumbled, which allowed the Falcons to scoop it up and run it into the end zone for an overkill final score of 29-22.
So that’s a 12 point swing from 17 points to 29 in what was a few seconds of game clock. Crazy crap can and does happen in the NFL.
I’m not implying that the team should quit, but if they are 12+ points behind and 30 30 or fewer seconds left on the clock, what good will shuffling players or calling for more time outs accomplish? bringing in the big star to finish the game can’t possibly save the game at that point
I don’t think the clock is supposed to run during the try, regardless of whether it’s a 1-point or 2-point attempt. So was it 2s left on the clock after the touchdown?
Yup. It was one heck of an end of game goal line stand for both teams. Great if you love long play reviews. 
I don’t watch much pro basketball, but in college at least, it would be very, very rare for a team to be seriously contesting the game with a 12-point margin and 30 seconds left. The usual scenario in that case (99+% of the time) is that if the leading team has the ball, they dribble out the clock, and if the trailing team has the ball, they throw up a last shot and then the leading team dribbles out the clock. I’m not sure what games you’re watching where you’re seeing otherwise. If a coach is subbing at that point it’s usually just to get a few bench-warmers and walk-ons onto the court for some token playing time.
For a deficit of eight points or less that would be very different, and as others have pointed out examples can be cited where teams have blown such leads so there is no sense in giving up.