OT: NBA considering one free throw instead of two or three

[thestache23]

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.

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

I like the idea. It speeds the game up a little during the slowest parts of the game. It also makes the free throw itself more challenging and interesting because of the increased pressure the player has to make one free throw worth two or three points, without the benefit of the "practice effect" of taking more than one attempt. It won't affect the NBA's TV revenue since the timeouts/TV commercial time will be the same. They should test it out in the D-league and see how it works.

How about not allowing players to high 5 every single person in the building in between FTs to save time.

[nykballa2k4]

I'm not really a fan of a player getting to take a single free throw worth 3 points tbh. That's a really easy 3 point shot.

well 1) nobody should be fouling on 3 pointers... 2) it really will speed it up and I would expect that ft% overall would go down.

Additionally it won't increase the overall point per foul because if a player was going to make 2 out of 3, they will make the same 2 out of 3 and wind up with the same 6 out of 9 points.

[duetta]

If the games are too long, it's because of the ticky-tack fouls. But as far as I'm concerned, the games are not too long.

[Dr. Detfink]

Paper, rock, scissors...

[Phish Tank]

if they should do anything, they should bring the college basketball one and one rule. This one is pretty dumb and is probably only supported by owners of expensive talents that shoot poorly from the foul line.

[nykballa2k4]

if they should do anything, they should bring the college basketball one and one rule. This one is pretty dumb and is probably only supported by owners of expensive talents that shoot poorly from the foul line.

How does it benefit the Blake Griffins and Dwight Howards? Every miss counts twice...

[MeloTime]

Honestly...if the NBA wants to save time they need to touch calling those "Durant", "Leborn" & "Kobe" touch fouls and breathing too hard fouls. Let the games ride out like the 90s and you will save the same amount of time. And it not a good idea, it will mess with people shooting % , players will be launching 40 - 3s a game with tight defense hoping a foul is called so they can get 3 points with a single free throw attempt. It just doesn't make any sense to me. Keep the game the way it is and stop rewarding Harden free throws for every time HE SHOVES THE BALL IN SOMEONES FACE AS HE DRIVING TO THE BASKET. God that pisses me off..

[Knicky Barnes]

This idea is trash. And why so much emphasis on the length of an NBA game?

Doesn't seem broke, why try to fix it?

Sent from my LG-D851 using RealGM Forums mobile app

[AlphakirA]

Part of why it's only worth 1 point is because you're not being defended. Wouldn't it make more sense to call less fouls rather than awarding guys that just run at the rim hoping to get hit or 'explode' (LeBron) when their arm gets touched? The only thing that needs to be fixed in the NBA is the final two minutes of a game. Stop allowing timeouts or limit it to just 1 in the final 2-3 minutes.

[playteamball]

I like it.

Also make it 5 fouls to foul out, like college, which will discourage fouling.

[duetta]

The NBA could speed up most games by eliminating a couple of TV time outs. Most of these games are being broadcast on local cable anyway - on which the cable channels typically run the same commercials over and over again (which suggests they don't cost a whole lot). Better to eliminate them than cut down on the amount of player interaction with the game.

[Knicksman780]

Here's a fun idea...How about a possession arrow with a twist. On jump balls, the person who caused the jump ball that plays for the team with a possession arrow in their favor shoots one three point shot for possession. It's like we do with "hit or miss" in streetball for jump balls. Would be funny to see centers shooting hit or miss threes.

[HarthorneWingo]

The story said WAS being considered in the D League. Save the knee jerk reactions for legitimate issues.

It's so dry right now, I could post a thread "Wingo makes up stories about Knicks" which would probably generates responses. Probably not very nice ones, but responses nonetheless.

[BodyCount]

let's just turn basketball into football and be done with this "small" changes

[MrProb]

This will hurt KD's PPG. too much they won't allow it

How?

Was just joking because KD's FTA per game is like 10 -11...

[BadNewsBarnes]

Hey....why do we start with cutting down on the commercials in between periods, before and after the game, and those f'n TV timeouts for network games? You might even cut down on obesity if that happened?

[spaceballer]

if they should do anything, they should bring the college basketball one and one rule. This one is pretty dumb and is probably only supported by owners of expensive talents that shoot poorly from the foul line.

How does it benefit the Blake Griffins and Dwight Howards? Every miss counts twice...

It benefits poor free throw shooters like Howard because, in Morey's own words, it "increases the variance."

Morey stated that when your team is at a disadvantage, what you want to do statistically is "increase the variance", thus enhancing the chances of a favorable fringe outcome. He used that exact phrase during the OKC/Rocket series.

This proposal of his does the same thing to help Dwight Howard. The lesser number of shots creates comparatively "increased variance", as opposed to a larger number of shot attempts, where the law of averages and regression to mean ensures that the outcomes track more closely to the expected poor free throw shooting for guys like Dwight Howard. Lesser shot attempts, for the same number of points, means a greater chance of "increased variance" from mean. The more shots there are, the more the overall result will statistically revert to average, which is a bad thing when you have a poor free throw shooter like Howard.

If it's 1 shot attempt for 3 pts, hey, maybe Dwight will get lucky. But 3 out of 3, LOL at Dwight's free throw average. This is a Morey proposal to help poor free throw shooters like Dwight Howard by "increasing the variance."

[kane]

I like the idea in theory it would cut down on all the stupid hand slapping after the first FT but the problem comes in on 3's

Any idea to help speed up game is deserved to be toyed with id like to see them try it out in the D-league or preseason

[nykballa2k4]

if they should do anything, they should bring the college basketball one and one rule. This one is pretty dumb and is probably only supported by owners of expensive talents that shoot poorly from the foul line.

How does it benefit the Blake Griffins and Dwight Howards? Every miss counts twice...

It benefits poor free throw shooters like Howard because, in Morey's own words, it "increases the variance."

Morey stated that when your team is at a disadvantage, what you want to do statistically is "increase the variance", thus enhancing the chances of a favorable fringe outcome. He used that exact phrase during the OKC/Rocket series.

This proposal of his does the same thing to help Dwight Howard. The lesser number of shots creates comparatively "increased variance", as opposed to a larger number of shot attempts, where the law of averages and regression to mean ensures that the outcomes track more closely to the expected poor free throw shooting for guys like Dwight Howard. Lesser shot attempts, for the same number of points, means a greater chance of "increased variance" from mean. The more shots there are, the more the overall result will statistically revert to average, which is a bad thing when you have a poor free throw shooter like Howard.

If it's 1 shot attempt for 3 pts, hey, maybe Dwight will get lucky. But 3 out of 3, LOL at Dwight's free throw average. This is a Morey proposal to help poor free throw shooters like Dwight Howard by "increasing the variance."

increasing the variance also increases the likelihood that he goes 0-fer and has 4 empty trips to the line. Particularly for poor ft shooters, where I would assume w/o looking at data that they do worse on the first of two attempts.

[spaceballer]

How does it benefit the Blake Griffins and Dwight Howards? Every miss counts twice...

It benefits poor free throw shooters like Howard because, in Morey's own words, it "increases the variance."

Morey stated that when your team is at a disadvantage, what you want to do statistically is "increase the variance", thus enhancing the chances of a favorable fringe outcome. He used that exact phrase during the OKC/Rocket series.

This proposal of his does the same thing to help Dwight Howard. The lesser number of shots creates comparatively "increased variance", as opposed to a larger number of shot attempts, where the law of averages and regression to mean ensures that the outcomes track more closely to the expected poor free throw shooting for guys like Dwight Howard. Lesser shot attempts, for the same number of points, means a greater chance of "increased variance" from mean. The more shots there are, the more the overall result will statistically revert to average, which is a bad thing when you have a poor free throw shooter like Howard.

If it's 1 shot attempt for 3 pts, hey, maybe Dwight will get lucky. But 3 out of 3, LOL at Dwight's free throw average. This is a Morey proposal to help poor free throw shooters like Dwight Howard by "increasing the variance."

increasing the variance also increases the likelihood that he goes 0-fer and has 4 empty trips to the line. Particularly for poor ft shooters, where I would assume w/o looking at data that they do worse on the first of two attempts.

Increasing the variance increases the likelihood of BOTH good fringe outcomes AND bad fringe outcomes, but it DECREASES the likelihood of the mean outcome. When the mean outcome is that you're a poor free throw shooter, then increasing the likelihood of the positive AND negative fringe outcomes while reducing the likelihood of the average outcome is a good thing and benefits poor free throw shooters like Howard.