Welcome back to another episode of Dumping Them Out.
When I first started this blog nearly 3 years ago I wanted to call it Sunday Sentences.
But I was told that my thoughts weren’t interesting enough, and nobody would read them.
So then I changed it to Dumping Them Out and added a bunch of Boob GIFs between my thoughts.
Then it was good enough to be published.
I learned an important lesson about blogging that day.
The sport of basketball is clearly broken.
I don’t know how basketball has allowed itself to get to this point.
I don’t know how basketball fans have come to accept certain things as part of their sport.
I started to see some people finally speak up last weekend at the conclusion of the Arizona-Oregon game.
When in the final minute, Arizona perfectly executed the “foul up 3” strategy.
But fouling up 3 is only the tip of the ice berg.
Basketball as a whole just accepts fouling at the end of games as good basketball strategy.
The way the rules are written, it’s obviously the smart thing to do.
But it’s insane to me how the first 95% of all basketball games are played one way.
The way basketball was designed to be played (i.e.
the offense tries to score and the defense tries to stop them).
The team who’s trailing stars fouling as soon as the ball is inbounded.
It sucks to watch.
The last minute of the game is stretched out into 20-minutes of real time.
There’s maybe 5 seconds of action at a time between whistles.
CBS makes millions of dollars in commercial breaks in 1-minute of gameplay.
Sometimes it all culminates in a thrilling buzzer-beater finish.
But more often than not, the game just kinda peters out.
And even when we do get that exciting finish, the road to get there is painful.
Basketball has been that way for so long that people don’t even question it.
There’s no world (in any sport) where committing a foul/penalty should be beneficial for your team.
If that is the case in your sport, then there’s something wrong with your sport.
There’s no way fouling at the ends of games is what the inventors of basketball had envisioned.
It’s a loophole in the rules.
I sometimes wonder if basketball could implement a continuation rule the way soccer does.
If an offensive player is fouled as he’s passing the ball, but still completes the pass.
Or if he’s fouled in the process of successful dribbling out of a trap.
The offense shouldn’t have to stop their possession if they’re able to hold onto the ball.
They use in the TBT basketball tournament.
With the Elam Ending, there’s no free throw contest.
The winning team has to close out the game by running an offense and playing actual basketball.
But the Elam Ending has problems too.
It eliminates the traditional buzzer beater.
Walk-off baskets are still very much in play, but not having literal buzzer beaters is a tough swallow.
It also occasionally results in walk-off free throws.
Which isn’t the most thrilling conclusion to a game.
But I still think the Elam Ending is the best solution.
The #1 thing I’d love to see basketball get rid of is fouling as a viable strategy.
It’s just so fundamentally backwards.
The last couple minutes of basketball games can be so brutal to watch.
But at this point, that’s what basketball is.
I don’t think it’s ever going to change.
More than any other sport, basketball is ripe for loopholes.
That seems backwards to me too.
The act of taking a charge on defense is pretty silly as well.
There are way too many fouls in general.
Refs could call half as many fouls as they do, and the game would be perfectly fine.
The sheer number of whistles is absurd.
I’m sorry, I know I’m just yelling at a cloud at this point.
Maybe I just don’t like basketball.
Somebody has to do it.
Fix your sport basketball.
I promise you’re free to make it better.
