One Free Throw - NBA proposal to shorten games

[GunRanger]

Around last season’s All-Star break, preliminary chatter began among the league’s basketball operations folks and rule geeks about the prospect of reducing all trips to the free-throw line to a single foul shot. D-League president Dan Reed and Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey were the closest thing to co-sponsors of a bill. Nobody was proposing anything to be fast-tracked, but an imperative to figure out ways to shorten pro basketball games gave the idea some life as something to consider implementing in the D-League.

The concept was this: A player fouled in the act of shooting or in a penalty situation would attempt only a single free throw. If that player was shooting a 2-point shot or in a penalty situation at the time of the foul, the free throw attempt would be worth two points. If that player was fouled in the act of launching a 3-point shot, he’d go to the line for a single shot worth three points.

By doing so, those 47 attempts per game would be whittled down to about 26. There’s no hard data on the average length of time it takes to shoot a pair of free throws, but my stopwatch clocks it at approximately 45 seconds from the sound of the whistle to the second shot reaching the rim. A trip to the line for a single technical or an and-1 situation, though, takes about 30 seconds. These numbers vary wildly. (Walking from one end of the floor to the other after a loose-ball foul takes an eternity, whereas a shooting foul in the paint is a short commute. You also have a fair share of Dwight Howards who can be timed with a calendar.) But we can fairly approximate a second or third free throw as a 15-second exercise. Using that estimate, scrapping 21 free throws from a game would shave more than five minutes of stoppage from the average NBA or D-League game.
“We’re an entertainment product, and the more free flow in basketball, the better,” Morey said. “All the surveying supports that. Basketball is better when basketball players are playing basketball. Stoppages mean less basketball, which is boring. It also means an over-instrumenting of the game. It’s a beautiful game and the closer you can get to two well-prepared teams playing back and forth without interruption or over-management, the better.”

Four rules last season ranging from reducing the number of timeouts to demanding that teams facilitate quicker substitutions trimmed a total of two minutes from D-League games. That’s not insignificant, but it’s a fraction of the five minutes that would be saved if the D-League went to a single free throw. And those five minutes come entirely during a stoppage of live play, unlike, for instance, a measure to shorten a quarter from 12 to 10 minutes, which would snip eight minutes of game action.


Reed kept the conversation about free throws alive on calls and informal conversations through the spring, and the D-League’s Basketball Rules Committee took up the issue at their August meeting. By that point Reed had departed for a position at Facebook and, without a vocal advocate, the committee decided not to pursue the idea any further.

“It’s an interesting concept,” said Chris Alpert, the D-League’s vice president of basketball operations. “But as we discussed it further with the basketball guys, we just felt it would be compromising the integrity of the game and players’ statistics. We didn’t want to skew a player’s free-throw shooting percentage and we didn’t want to compromise the purity of the game.”

In support of the skewed stats argument, the D-League brandished stats that showed that players convert the second of a pair of free throws at a better rate than the first (for D-Leaguers, 71.1 percent vs. 76.3 percent; for NBA players, 73.2 percent vs. 77.7 percent). The trend holds for three-shot trips, as well, as players get progressively more proficient from the first to third attempts. On single attempts -- which would be every trip to the line under the proposed reform -- the D-League shot 71.8 percent, while the NBA shot 72.8 percent.

http://espn.go.com/blog/truehoop/post/_/id/70581/hoopidea-is-one-trip-to-the-free-throw-line-enough

 

[Cerebral Labyrinth]

I think this would be a terrible idea. How many close games have we seen where the outcome is swayed by made or missed free throws? I don't want to see this part of the game be condensed.

I'm almost certainly in the minority as I know casual fans would like this. But being someone who watches basketball regularly, I don't have a need for the game to be shortened - freethrows make late game scenarios very interesting to me.

 

[TooLazyToMakeUp1]

How about refs stop trying to impose themselves into the games.

Whenever players start jawing and the game gets a little more physical it's a stretch of whistle whistle whistle

 

[KingpinOG]

Who complains about basketball games being too long?????

 

[tremonthustler1]

How about refs stop trying to impose themselves into the games.

Whenever players start jawing and the game gets a little more physical it's a stretch if whistle whistle whistle

as it should.

 

[CantStop]

Adam Silver been feeling himself since the sterling ruling. Chill out smh.

 

[Rocket Scientist]

They must mean when teams are down 20 points with 2 mins left,then they start fouling

 

[tremonthustler1]

Adam Silver been feeling himself since the sterling ruling. Chill out smh.

Adam Silver has nothing to do with this.

 

[Higher Tech]

It would be better to leave it as it is and adopt the 1and 1 for penalty shots, and no intentional fouls. If they REALLY want to address the issue of games being too long. Its really the last 2 min of the game going on forever that's nerve wrecking and thats mostly because of all the god damn commercials.

 

[Hersh]

kill commercials if u want to shorten games

 

[Darealtwo1]

how bout u make the games commercial free, i can bet that will shorten the games a WHOLE lot....o wait yall wont do that cuz that makes yall money

 

[EA]

kill commercials if u want to shorten games

This. The latter stages of the playoffs are annoying as hell in late game situations. It feels like there's a commercial break after every play.

 

[MaLi]

I was under the impression that the video replay made the games last longer than needed... Why dont they fix that instead of trying to fix something that isn't even broken

Cheering for/against a 68 percent freethrow shooter at the line, down 1, with 3 seconds .....





























or but either way

 

[MikelArteta]

Adopt the cfl rule no matter how many timeouts you have remaining you can only use 2 under 2 minutes

 

[Yah-Yah]

This. The latter stages of the playoffs are annoying as hell in late game situations. It feels like there's a commercial break after every play.

I never understood how a 20 sec timeout = 5 minutes of commercials