1969-70 NBA Rule Changes

[Dipper 13]

I was just watching Kareem's debut NBA game on iTunes and listened to ABC commentator Jack Twyman explain some of the new rule changes in the league for the 1969-70 season. Apparently before 1970, the following rules were in place:


- A tip in off a missed FT was only worth 1 point, not 2

- Off the ball (loose ball) fouls automatically resulted in a FT attempt for the fouled player, no matter which team had possession

- Teams got into the penalty after 4 fouls, down from 5 (before 1967 it was actually 6 fouls).

[colts18]

Was the 3 for 2 FT rule in effect that year?

[Dipper 13]

Was the 3 for 2 FT rule in effect that year?

It was around until the early 80's.

[colts18]

Was the 3 for 2 FT rule in effect that year?

It was around until the early 80's.

When did they institute it? I was surprised when I saw my first one of those in a 70's NBA game.

[Dipper 13]

Same time as the shot clock, 1954. It was removed in 1981.

[Dipper 13]

Another note about that crazy rule on tipping missed FT's in. Not only would the putback off the missed FT count only as one point rather than two, but the point would be credited to the shooter at the line who missed. Not the guy who actually scored the basket. Unbelievable.

[colts18]

Another note about that crazy rule on tipping missed FT's in. Not only would the putback off the missed FT count only as one point rather than two, but the point would be credited to the shooter at the line who missed. Not the guy who actually scored the basket. Unbelievable.

The NBA had some weird rules in the past. IIRC, they used to allow Wilt to dunk from the FT line instead of shoot back in the day.

[Dipper 13]

The NBA had some weird rules in the past. IIRC, they used to allow Wilt to dunk from the FT line instead of shoot back in the day.

No that was a rule put in by the NCAA before Wilt ever played a college game, and swiftly adopted by the NBA. Wilt used to do it in practices, but later said he would never have done it in a game.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fyz-FhP2ONk&t=3m49s


Nov 28, 1956

'It seems Wilt has an unorthodox method of shooting free throws. The big guy takes aim at the basket from several feet behind the line. Then he takes about three giant steps, leaves his feet before reaching the line, and stuffs the ball through the hoop.

Under the old rule, it was perfectly legal as Wilt never touched the floor before letting go of the ball. In addition his percentage was fantastic.

"Why, he would have had a free throw percentage of 100," said [Tex] Winter. "He never missed."

Incidentally the rules committee did not mention Chamberlain by name as a reason for the change. The rule change was made, according to the committee, "to prevent freak activity."'




Prescott Evening Courier - Dec 13, 1955


'If Coach Allen did wish to present a clinching argument in favor of raising the baskets he would only have to look to his freshman squad and put the finger on one Wilton Chamberlain. Wilt the Stilt, as Chamberlain has been called, is a 7-foot-plus growing boy. He has no trouble at all "dunking" the ball into the 12-foot baskets and might even come close to doing the same at the 15-foot height. Many coaches call Chamberlain the greatest basketball player in the country - right now and at this stage of his development.'






I guess this would be the closest to him ever doing the FT line dunk in a game.

[Sharifani_San]

rule changes don't matter for those doing statistical analysis, for them the NBA represents a continuum from time immemorial that advanced statistics can capture; rule changes are kept constant for purposes of apples to apples comparison.

[Dipper 13]

rule changes are kept constant for purposes of apples to apples comparison.

Yes this is what bothers me. I appreciate the concept in looking at possession efficiency (as did Frank McGuire in the 50's and I believe Vince Miller with the Sixers), but not the cherry picking of certain numbers depending on the topic or comparison. Even then the inconsistent figures in the case of Wilt's teams are not used to say just that, but rather expand into all kinds of insane comments from him being a regular season cancer to an inept low post scorer who had no moves. Also a poor passer and turnover prone. We have posters here who have hinted that him just even touching the ball in this era would result in a instant turnover. In so many words, they are using inconsistent estimates (with fixed rates for offensive rebounding and turnovers every year) to support their predetermined view that he was a poor regular season player, regressing even worse in the playoffs. And then the era is dismissed by many as weak (especially when Russell is being debated with a more recent player), so how bad do they really think these players were? In watching KAJ's debut I honestly couldn't believe it when I heard about the putback off the missed FT rule being worth only 1 point. We can only wonder how big a factor this was. We know Wilt's teams missed a lot of foul shots, is it a stretch to presume that they got some of those misses back on the offensive boards? Instead of being credited for only 1 point on that possession, after 1970 it would be 2 full points.

[D.Brasco]

I guess this would be the closest to him ever doing the FT line dunk in a game.

I believe wilt could make free throw line dunks but i think Bill Russell took off farther in that vid that came out than wilt is in that pic here.

[ElGee]

rule changes are kept constant for purposes of apples to apples comparison.

Yes this is what bothers me. I appreciate the concept in looking at possession efficiency (as did Frank McGuire in the 50's and I believe Vince Miller with the Sixers), but not the cherry picking of certain numbers depending on the topic or comparison. Even then the inconsistent figures in the case of Wilt's teams are not used to say just that, but rather expand into all kinds of insane comments from him being a regular season cancer to an inept low post scorer who had no moves. Also a poor passer and turnover prone. We have posters here who have hinted that him just even touching the ball in this era would result in a instant turnover. In so many words, they are using inconsistent estimates (with fixed rates for offensive rebounding and turnovers every year) to support their predetermined view that he was a poor regular season player, regressing even worse in the playoffs. And then the era is dismissed by many as weak (especially when Russell is being debated with a more recent player), so how bad do they really think these players were? In watching KAJ's debut I honestly couldn't believe it when I heard about the putback off the missed FT rule being worth only 1 point. We can only wonder how big a factor this was. We know Wilt's teams missed a lot of foul shots, is it a stretch to presume that they got some of those misses back on the offensive boards? Instead of being credited for only 1 point on that possession, after 1970 it would be 2 full points.

Dipper you mentioned this in another thread and I didn't get to it -- my method does not use a constant figure for OREB% anymore, but instead is based on each team's rebounding changes.

[Dipper 13]

I believe wilt could make free throw line dunks but i think Bill Russell took off farther in that vid that came out than wilt is in that pic here.

Yes, Russell was also a tremendous leaper. It looks as if he jumps at least a foot further out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poeWs2D5tTA

Dipper you mentioned this in another thread and I didn't get to it -- my method does not use a constant figure for OREB% anymore, but instead is based on each team's rebounding changes.

Thanks, I didn't notice seeing as your website seems to be down. Is there another source for the figures?


http://www.backpicks.com/pre-1974-estimations/

[GreenHat]

rule changes are kept constant for purposes of apples to apples comparison.

Yes this is what bothers me. I appreciate the concept in looking at possession efficiency (as did Frank McGuire in the 50's and I believe Vince Miller with the Sixers), but not the cherry picking of certain numbers depending on the topic or comparison. Even then the inconsistent figures in the case of Wilt's teams are not used to say just that, but rather expand into all kinds of insane comments from him being a regular season cancer to an inept low post scorer who had no moves. Also a poor passer and turnover prone. We have posters here who have hinted that him just even touching the ball in this era would result in a instant turnover. In so many words, they are using inconsistent estimates (with fixed rates for offensive rebounding and turnovers every year) to support their predetermined view that he was a poor regular season player, regressing even worse in the playoffs. And then the era is dismissed by many as weak (especially when Russell is being debated with a more recent player), so how bad do they really think these players were? In watching KAJ's debut I honestly couldn't believe it when I heard about the putback off the missed FT rule being worth only 1 point. We can only wonder how big a factor this was. We know Wilt's teams missed a lot of foul shots, is it a stretch to presume that they got some of those misses back on the offensive boards? Instead of being credited for only 1 point on that possession, after 1970 it would be 2 full points.

The problem is posters like you go completely the other way.

For example you mention that people were saying that Wilt was turnover prone. I've seen you specifically extrapolate that Wilt would not be turnover prone for his career based on ONE HALF. That's even more egregious.

One of the posters did an analysis of a game and noted that the official scorer "forgot" to record 6 misses by Jerry West bringing his shots down from 30 to 24 (somehow he didn't forget any makes). Is it a stretch to presume that Wilt and other players of the era had more of their misses "forgotten" even with their already relatively mediocre against primitive defenses?

[Dipper 13]

^Is it too much to believe that they would be even average at their positions in the NBA today? Or dare I say above average? There are posters here who don't think so.

Jerry West bringing his shots down from 30 to 24

I will rewatch the 1963 game again, focusing on FGA.

[lorak]

Jerry West bringing his shots down from 30 to 24

I will rewatch the 1963 game again, focusing on FGA.

All West's FGA from that game: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OGEmYunLwJ8

And it's not isolated incident that back then they screwed stats badly: viewtopic.php?f=64&p=28818129

[Dipper 13]

^ That is puzzling as well. But note the shot off the missed FT about 15 seconds into the video. That according to the old rule was worth only one point, not two. But even then was it just tip-ins/putbacks around the rim, or was that entire possession worth only one point at most once the FT shot was taken? If so then how would this be recorded in the FGA column, if at all. Twyman did not specify that. Also that play at 1:04 looked like a pass rather than shot. I count 28-29 shot attempts. We will know for sure once more games are released. There is definitely a lot more footage out there than the NBA will admit.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDEDz-34ZDQ&t=28m31s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Np29MW_XN8&t=16m6s

Above in the first link we can see a brief clip in a broadcast angle of Hal Greer's baseline shot over Havlicek and Russell in Game 5 of the 1967 playoff series. Are we to believe that entire game doesn't exist? Given how many times Russell played on national TV (ABC), we are to believe not one of those games remains?

Remember the 2005 article on the NBA's partnership with SGI? There is a more recent update from 2012 below. If all goes well, it will be available in the next few years.



http://news.techworld.com/storage/34011 ... d-storage/

NBA digitizes 40 years of video footage with SGI visualized storage

The organization is now processing around 38TB a day of new and historical game footage

28 September 2012

The US National Basketball Association (NBA) is leveraging technology typically used for genomics research, climate modelling and advanced scientific research to archive decades of footage and better communicate with its fans and teams around the world.

Seven years ago, the NBA was faced with the problem of how to breathe life into racks of decaying video and film that make up a 50+ year library of over 500,000 hours of basketball game footage. Not only did it need to preserve this content, but also repurpose it for multiple digital markets.

Transferring the whole lot onto a spinning disk array was out of the question. It would have been prohibitively expensive – not only in terms of the acquisition cost of the disk, but in terms of the power and cooling required to keep it running.
The NBA therefore decided to use a tiered storage visualization product from SGI, called Data Migration Facility (DMF), which ties together a relatively small amount of disk on the front end with the massive tape library where all of the content resides.

“To the users it all just looks like disk – it looks like one big file system – but to the administrators, it gives them the ability to expand the volume of tape in the robot only when they need it, and at a dramatically lower cost than it would be if it was on disk,” he said.

Each NBA game has about 9 cameras shooting a 3-hour long HD resolution file, so trawling through all this footage to find 15 seconds of the best shot has traditionally been a time-consuming operation.

DMF enables the user to zoom to a specific point on the tape and extract the 15 seconds that they need. This is because the headers (inodes) of the files are always on disk, so when a user clicks on a file or a link within a browser, the portion of the file that they want starts to stream.

“That's really what made this work for them. They could manage this rapid access to data tape in the same way that it would to disk,” said Christofferson.

By moving to SGI's system, NBA has been able to expand the monetisation of its archived content dramatically. A certain amount of content is free to download at from the NBA.com website, but both commercial customers (such as television networks) and consumers can also subscribe to custom feeds, or pay to use clips from games on their own website.

NBA teams also access between 1,000 and 3,000 clips a day just for researching other teams in preparation for future for games. So far, over 2.4 billion videos have been viewed in 215 countries, and the time between a live event occurring and any subscriber being able to receive a clip of video is now just 30 seconds.

However, SGI is still only half way through digitizing the 500,000 hours of historical content in NBA's library, and about 25,000 hours of new content are added each year from current season games. Moreover, new camera angles are constantly being added, and some games are now shot in 3D, tripling the volume of content.

SGI expects that it will take another two to four years to complete the archive project. The organization has already upgraded to a new digital content facility in New Jersey that is processing around 38TB a day of new and historical game footage.

NBA has an advantage over a lot of other leagues, according to Christofferson, because it has ownership rights to all the content. Baseball, for example, has a much more distributed ownership model, and the US National Football League also has a different system.

“None of these other sports are organized to manage and monetize content the way the NBA does,” he said. “Together with SGI, the NBA has really pioneered this.”

[lorak]

^ That is puzzling as well. But note the shot off the missed FT about 15 seconds into the video. That according to the old rule was worth only one point, not two. But even then was it just tip-ins/putbacks around the rim, or was that entire possession worth only one point at most once the FT shot was taken?

That shot (15s) mark was counted as 2 pts.