- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
Many people in the thread have complained about the number of timeouts each team has at the end of the game. I'm not certain I see the problem. Currently for a televised game, each team gets four 30-second timeouts and one 60-second timeout per game. Only 3 of the 30-second time outs may be transfered to the second half. This means that at the maximum, there can be only five minutes of timeouts in the final four minutes of game time, but it's usually no more than half that.
The thing that really slows down the end of the game is foul shots created when the trailing team fouls to try to get the ball back. The simple solution? Give the team the option not to take the shots.
Once you're in the double-bonus, allow the fouled team to choose to either:
A) Shoot the two shots.
B) Reset the shot clock. Position an inbound passer on the sideline just behind half-court. Offensive players can be anywhere on the court. Defensive are required to be on the offensive side of half-court. Defensive players cannot cross half-court until an inbounds offensive player controls the ball.
Given option B, the offense may inbound pass to an undefended player in the backcourt and then waste a couple precious seconds as the defenders run to him, or (if they're trailing) they may pass the ball into a defended offensive zone for a chance at a quick three-pointer.
This eliminates the need to intentionally foul at the end of the game to get the ball back, because you won't get it back. You will continue to play agressively, however, because you will be required to cleanly steal the ball in order to get it back.
