Minnesota Sports Forum

My proposal? Make 3 points count only in the last 3 minutes of every quarter.

Anyone else have any crazy ideas!

Professional players have basically outgrown the confines of the standard court. They've become too good for the sport. I think you may see the corner 3 taken away, the arc won't have a break and will just continue until it hits the OB line. Hopefully defenders will be allowed more contact in order to keep players in front of them, forcing coaches to use more motion offense. Maybe move the line back a little more making the 3 point shot a real home run. But I agree, the endless barrage of 3 pointers gets pretty boring.

Id rather see progress on the foul hunting and diving than to monkey with the three point line. As long as the shot is made its still basketball. The obscurity of the foul calls and players doing unnatural things on the court to get a call is really what makes me sick.

I really like the 3 point shot. It's an exciting shot in a sense because it can really swing a game and lead to all of these higher scoring affairs. And as perimeter defenses have improved, you can see guys like Harden and Luka and others developing the ability to take step-back and side-step threes which are pretty exciting to see. And teams have diversified their passing to the perimeter as well. It used to be that only PGs would pick up a lot of assists, and now you see good wings and even bigs able to swing the ball around and hit shooters, and that passing is frankly, pretty beautiful to watch. There's real teamwork there. And maybe mostly, I like how this revolution has also stretched the floor and helped lead to more shots at the rim, including dunks, which are the most exciting shots there are.

But I understand the criticism. Three-pointers are ultimately jump shots, and it's fun to watch a more diverse range of types of shots. Ideally, you want to be flexible for new styles of play, diverse styles of offense, and various types of offensive talent and the possibility of offensive evolution. In particular, it'd be nice to see some more midrange offense mixed in. It is a little sad to be missing the midrange game that MJ, Kobe, and AI made so much fun to watch. If there were a way to balance out the incentives and open up this kind of game again a bit, this might also deepen the talent pool in the NBA, because there are some guys who just don't have 3 point range, and in today's NBA, it's really hard for those guys to make it.

The 3 point revolution happened because people finally seemed to realize, after decades(!), that they should follow the math and just take more efficient shots--layups/dunks, FTs, and of course, 3 pointers. So if you want to balance out the game and bring back a bit of the midrange into the mix, just change the mathematical incentives. I'd be open to widening the court a little and extending the 3 point line just a bit the whole way around. Theoretically, this would lower 3 point percentages a bit and balance out the incentives for desirable shots to other parts of the floor. Stretching the floor even more should help keep the dunks and layups coming, while also opening up the midrange a bit, and lowering 3 point percentages a tad would also balance out the shots a bit more. I think you'd see some more of the cool floaters, fadeaways, etc., as well as (potentially) some more diverse offense like running curls off of picks and even maybe something like the triangle, which was kind of a passing-focused midrange offense.

EDIT: Here's a crazy idea I'm not even sure I like: How about a 4 point shot from the center circle available only in 4th quarters and overtimes?

As for the foul fishing doper, I think the league has started to crack down a bit on that. Guys kicking their legs out on jump shots are getting called for fouls now, the rip-through followed by a shot isn't getting guys FTs anymore, and challenges are catching flops at times. I do wish they'd call an offensive foul a bit more when offensive players (often with the ball) get past the defender and then plant themselves in the path of the defender and basically take a charge on a guy running down the court to defend when their team doesn't have the ball. That's crap.

As for something really radical, I'm all for Elam endings. I don't even need to see that tested in the G league. Give it to me now. Every game ends on a made shot? Yes please! Plus, nobody would intentionally foul to try to close the gap at the end of the game. This would prevent those end-of-game slowdowns that suck out the flow of the game. The Elam ending would probably be the best reform the league could possibly make. I can't think of a drawback.

And give me the play-in tournament from here on out. Maybe the first round could be moved back to best of 5 to make things a bit more interesting too.

Also, give the number 1 seed the option of choosing between playing the 7 seed or the 8 seed. That'll add some drama.

Lottery reforms? Lottery reforms. Brace yourselves.

1) I mentioned this in another thread, but let's have a computer randomly pick a cut-off date after the All-Star game when the lottery odds are set and keep it a secret. That way, teams wouldn't be essentially racing to lose like they often are at the end of the season when they know they need to have a worse record than other teams by a certain date. It'll cut down on explicit season-ending tanking.

2) Then, because of #1, you could probably move the odds a bit back closer to where they were before so the worst record has a slightly better chance of getting a top pick than the second worst, and so on, because the tanking would be a lot tougher. So instead of having the odds basically be 14% for the #1 pick for all of the bottom 3 teams, you could do something like 16, 14, and 12, and also do the same for the odds of getting the #2 and #3 pick, etc.

3) BUT, after the season, there should basically be a "Lottery Tournament" in which, for example, the team with the worst record (at the blind cutoff date) and the team with the second worst record play against each other in a best of three series. And the WINNING team gets the better lottery odds. Repeat that for the 3rd and 4th worst teams, and the 5th and 6th, 7th and 8th. This way you'd still be encouraging parity overall by generally helping the worst teams get higher draft picks than the playoff teams, but you'd lower the explicit tanking with the blind cutoff date, maintain some level of meritocracy by giving teams the chance to play with the chance to improve their lottery odds, and get more meaningful games for fans in the "lottery playoffs," which would run congruent to the first round of the regular playoffs. Think about it. Wouldn't it be so much more fun to root for the Wolves to WIN a couple games to increase of odds of a better pick by a few points than rooting for us to LOSE games? I think these lottery reforms in particular should definitely freakin' happen!

I like the idea for draft purposes and placing to devalue each successive game during the season. Games 1-8 count as a full loss then towards the end of the season they only count for a tenth for instance. Maybe the last two don't even count. You're already set.

End of season tanking would be useless, if you did tank you would have to do it to start the year.

You would have to try and balance the schedule based on last season records as well so one isn't tough early and easy late either though. But it's certainly possible.

If you do make the playoffs however then I would have that team placed out of the lottery as well.

This way teams are not motivated to lose (for draft purposes) and will try and get better throughout the year.

I want to widen the court by 3 feet and extend the 3P line back 1 foot. More space, lower 3P percentages slightly.

I would also take the cap off of the max contracts. The reason we do NOT have parody is because superstars can because they are underpaid join together and dominate the non super teams.

Super teams might be helpful to catch the casual fan, but it is a far more hindrance to anyone can win. Any team can come up and compete quickly with a few smart moves. Now it's just which super star wants to play with the other super star, it's fucking stupid.

WolvesFan21 wrote:I want to widen the court by 3 feet and extend the 3P line back 1 foot. More space, lower 3P percentages slightly.

I would also take the cap off of the max contracts. The reason we do NOT have parody is because superstars can because they are underpaid join together and dominate the non super teams.

To be fair... I disagree with the bolded. We already have parody around these parts.

The Wolves have been copying the Washington Generals strategy for decades now...

;-)

The the Wolves are a parody of an NBA team. We should get Christopher Guest to do a Mockumentary.

I'm in favor of something being done in the corner of the floor on offense because with so little room there guys are sort of cramped. I think most people want the game to be free flowing not have part of the floor encroaching a cramped feeling. So either take out that 3 point shot or extent the court to give more space. I think giving more space is probably the better option.

As far as tanking there are some creative ideas. I'm kinda curious to see how the current lottery odds play things out for the a couple years. I think teams are still going to want to be bad but the incentive isn't as strong as we'll have discussed in the would you rather thread. Might as well try and win a few games the percentages aren't THAT different. I still stay teams that "tank" are generally bad to begin with they didn't have to try that hard to suck. I do think tanking is a problem but like Insaid I'm curious to see what the current odds do and I wonder what way the NBA is trying to measure how teams might be tanking.

AbeVigodaLive wrote:

WolvesFan21 wrote:I want to widen the court by 3 feet and extend the 3P line back 1 foot. More space, lower 3P percentages slightly.

I would also take the cap off of the max contracts. The reason we do NOT have parody is because superstars can because they are underpaid join together and dominate the non super teams.

To be fair... I disagree with the bolded. We already have parody around these parts.

The Wolves have been copying the Washington Generals strategy for decades now...

;-)

Very true! I wish I could say I was parodying a dummy who couldn't spell. But not the case.

Anyways, I think some NBA parity would be nice, super teams is lame.