In this morning’s post, TrueHoop’s Henry Abbott laments about something that is very wrong with the game of basketball…
You know what’s wrong with basketball? Not guns, not gambling, not any of that. The biggest problem in basketball is free throws. If there was some way to severely reduce the amount of standing around in games, I think games would be a lot more fun to watch in TV or in person.
Here’s a suggestion: On a shooting foul, instead of a player getting two shots and a live rebound, the player gets one shot and his team gets the ball. This would reduce the number of times a player is fouled going to the hole because there would be very little upside to making a player “earn it” from the line if his team retains possession after the free throw attempt. It would also eliminate the tired/boring Hack-a-Shaq approach for the same reason.
The only time when this wouldn’t work would be at the end of games. If a team is trailing by two points, it could be to the defense’s advantage to intentionally foul with very little time remaining thinking that, after the free throw, it would be tough for the offense to get a shot off to win the game. How about in the final minute of each quarter, the rule would revert back to the current system — two free throws for each foul? That way, the end-of-game situations wouldn’t drastically change from what we know now, and end-of-game fouling would be reduced (at least up until the final minute) as teams are forced to play defense instead of hoping that the opponent misses some free throws.
Thoughts?
Photo from fOTOGLIF
