Teams would absolutely put their starters back in once the clock got turned off, though even if they didn't, I don't see forcing benchwarmers to score as any kind of benefit.
Personally, I strongly oppose the Elam thing. It would just give the favorite another advantage, greatly reducing the number of upsets. If a 15-point underdog has managed to be ahead by 5 after 36+ minutes (44+ minutes in the NBA), how is it fair to then start a new game and give the favorite an unlimited amount of time to outscore them by 12? Since upsets are basically what makes the NCAA tournament so popular, if the NCAA adopted this rule it would essentially be gutting the golden goose.
On a similar note, it would entirely eliminate the buzzer beater.
The Elam proposal falls under the same category as something like fractional points. It's a fun thing to think about, and probably sort of makes mathematical sense in some situations, but should never be implemented. The end of college basketball games are frequently awful, and I don't know what the solution is. Free throws plus the ball is too devastating a punishment for teams that genuinely accidentally foul because a defender gets beat. Implementing an "intentional foul" would just put focus on fouling intentionally but making it look not blatant.
So I think the thing to start with is to focus on the out-of-game aspects that make the end of college basketball games so hard to watch. The refs should focus on making free throws happen quickly, get extremely strict on coaches getting free time outs when a player fouls out, and eliminate the ability to call multiple timeouts in a row.
I totally agree with your last paragraph, even as fun as it is to imagine different and inventive ways to end games. I really don't understand why there is no triple bonus, though. The fact that (in theory) a team could win the game by fouling and forcing two free throws and then making lots of threes on the other end bothers me. The offense can do everything right, make all their free throws, and still lose the game (again, in theory). Regardless of whether it's likely to happen, the very fact that it is possible bothers me.
I don't get your logic here. I'm pretty sure that if you told the coach of the underdog that to win a game his team had to score 7 before the favorite scored 12 he would be pretty happy. I don't think upsets would be eliminated.
And conversely how is what happens now more fair, to start a new game late by turning a regular game into a foul shooting contest?
To respond to a separate post, yes buzzer beaters would be eliminated, but game winning shots would increase.
I will be interested to see how this experiment works in actual games.
Think about NCAA tournament upsets and near-upsets. In most of them, the underdog gets off to an early lead, and then the favorite wakes up and cuts into that lead and either wins or runs out of time. Under this Elam rule, the favorite would never run out of time. The odds of a 15-point favorite losing a game to 12 (between 3 and 4 baskets) after getting the wake up call of being behind at the four minute mark would seem to be pretty slim, even if they're spotting the other team 5 points. So it might not eliminate upsets, but it sure would make them a much rarer occurrence than they are now.
And for what? Basically this rule is saying, let's play two games -- the first game for 36 minutes (or 44 in the NBA) for the sole purpose of seeing how many points one team has to spot the other in the second game (which has no time limit). That just doesn't sound desirable to me.
And for what? The proposed changes to the end game are efforts to avoid the foul fest at many game ends and taking 20 minutes to play the last four clock minutes.
In one game ending there is a time limit, but no points limit. In the other there is a points limit, but no time limit. Two different ways to end a game, each with it's own virtues and problems. I think the Elam ending deserves the experiment without being dismissed out of hand.
You seem to equate "favorite" with "better team." They are not the same. And even "better team" is fluid from night to night. Consider Duke and USC this year. I don't think that with an Elam Ending Duke would have avoided the upset. The scenario you describe is where a clearly superior team plays below par for a large part of the game and then "wakes up." This is a subset of upsets, admittedly an exciting and memorable subset, but I don't think it is the majority and I don't buy your declarations of what must happen. I say run the experiment and see what happens. Data is good although it does tend to stifle speculation.
I am OK with trying it in "the minors" -- The Basketball Championship and the NBDL (or whatever it's called these days). We will learn something new -- and not just about this specific proposal.
The nightmare for me is the total loss of "arithmeticity" when all basketball games have variable length. It would make "minutes analysis" far more complicated. Now, it's easy. When analyzing a season past I look at the number of games, multiply by 40, count the number of overtimes, and multiply these by 25. Then I have season minutes. In an Elam Ending future, games would be at least 37 minutes long, but could actually go on much longer. We would have no idea how to project minutes played and our discussions would slide even more into minutiae. In fact, the entire board might melt away like the Wicked Witch of the West's being doused with water.
Sage Grouse
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'When I got on the bus for my first road game at Duke, I saw that every player was carrying textbooks or laptops. I coached in the SEC for 25 years, and I had never seen that before, not even once.' - David Cutcliffe to Duke alumni in Washington, DC, June 2013
God forbid we in anyway interfere with a minutes discussion/BSFest.
When I used the word "favorite," I wasn't talking about Vegas, I meant "better team." That said, a 15-point favorite in Vegas clearly is the better team, so I'm not sure why the distinction would be relevant. As for Duke/SC, if I understand the proposal properly, Duke was down 10 with 3:30 to play when the timed game would have been stopped. So Duke would've had to outscore SC 17-6 in the unlimited-time game to win it. Would we have done that? Probably not, but we would have had a much better chance to do it than to make up 10 points with 3:30 to play.
I call BS. There's just no way he is right about that. There are plenty of games where a team with a 1 point lead has the ball with 20 seconds left, someone gets fouled to stop the clock from running out, and the team shooting the FTs either misses one or the game goes to OT or whatever... I am not going to go through hundreds of NBA box scores to find those games, but it is just too common an occurrence for Elam to say it never happened.Elam found at least one deliberate crunch-time foul from trailing teams in 397 of 877 nationally televised NBA games from 2014 through the middle of this season, according to a PowerPoint presentation he has sent across the basketball world. The trailing team won zero of those games, according to Elam's data.
The end of basketball games is not something that is broken, especially in the NBA with the shorter shot clock where preserving seconds is less important than in college ball. It ain't broke, so don't fix it.
-Jason "now, having a point total the teams must reach is a fun way to play basketball versus playing to a time limit... but that's for playground ball, not pro and college games" Evans
Why are you wasting time here when you could be wasting it by listening to the latest episode of the DBR Podcast?
I think it's a brilliant plan. Not only does it get rid of the foulfest at the end of games, but it also gets rid of the other thing many (and Duke fans especially) dread, STALLBALL.
Think about it, you're up 10 with 4 minutes left, what do most teams do, they dribble the ball for 20 secs trying to run out the clock, which is incredibly boring to watch. With a rule change like this, there is no point in running out the clock, so teams would run their regular offense at the end of games.
This is an very creative and outside of the box plan that could really improve the game. In fact I'm not sure why you would only apply this to the last 4 minutes, I'd actually be fine with just making the entire game the first team to 70 wins.
None of this will happen of course because it's too radical a change from the current game.
So a game can never end on a great defensive play (that doesn't turn into offense) like Thornton blocking Berry? Or JJ playing the UNC play perfectly in 2005 and UNC doesn't even get a shot off?
No thank you, not everything has to end in an offensive score.
Let's take it further... play 39 minutes, then the last minute becomes "golden goal" regardless of score or possession.
/sarcasm
Let 'em play basketball.
I can't yet decide whether I am for or against the Elam Ending. But I certainly find it interesting, at least.
To guard against the the untimed game issue, what if the clock continued to run, but the 7-point concept remained intact as well? Said differently, what if the 7-point concept was only invoked if/when a team got to within 7 points of the other team with the clock still running the entire time?
I'm starting to think about it more, and I think I still don't like my tweak. But I'll keep thinking about it...
- Chillin
I think that it would reduce the number of commercials that could be shown at the end of the game. While we as fans would like this, it would reduce revenue to the NCAA and its member institutions. Therefore, I believe that this proposal is a non-starter.