| Suns/Lakers ending--timeout rules change in 2006/2007 trainwreck [message #978865] |
Mon, 01 May 2006 07:21 |
|
As controversial was the ending to Sunday's Suns/Lakers ending, the NBA
seems to have lost its mind listening to its coaches adopting the
following rules change starting 2006-2007:
"The head coach may request a timeout (20-second or full) at any time
during a game as long as his team has possession of the ball or there
is a suspension of play."
http://www.nba.com/rules_changes_060420.html
Since the playoffs are supposed to appeal in part to casual fans,
reducing one of the random aspects that make the final seconds of a
basketball game more unpredictable, one of the main selling points of
the game, is a blunder from a marketing perspective.
But this rules change will have far worse consequences. It is bad
enough that the players can interrupt the game within a play. Think
how absurd it would be to call a timeout during a play in football or
after a pitch has been thrown in baseball. At least a player who is
signalling for a timeout has to give up trying to pass the ball and
take a chance that the timeout will not be granted. The coach will be
under no such restrictions. What will inevitably occur is that if a
team has a couple of timeouts and the team is inbounding the
ball/bringing it up the court, a coach will automatically make a
halfway gesture of calling a timeout at the slightest sign of possible
trouble. The result will be chaos as the refs are supposed to somehow
now keep an eye and an ear open for the coaches as well as officiating
what the players are doing on the floor. Every single last minute play
in a close important game will have coaches whose teams have the ball
crying that they were signalling timeout any time the play goes badly
for their team, and the refereeing will seem even more biased and
arbitrary when the refs sometimes grant timeouts and sometimes don't.
While this will be convenient for coaches in their postgame interview
to have yet another excuse on why their team lost the game, this rules
change will be a disaster for everyone else. It will even be bad for
the players because we will have situations where a play is about to
turn out great, say a pass for a wide-open dunk, but instead after the
score the ref will waive off the basket and explain that the play had
actually been blown dead because the coach had signalled timeout.
I'm hoping this rules change gets thrown out at least by midseason.
|
|
|
| Re: Suns/Lakers ending--timeout rules change in 2006/2007 trainwreck [message #978909 ] |
Tue, 02 May 2006 00:31 |
|
jphamlore [at] yahoo.com wrote:
> The result will be chaos as the refs are supposed to somehow
> now keep an eye and an ear open for the coaches as well as officiating
> what the players are doing on the floor.
Yeah, that seems kind of ridiculous... as if the refs don't have enough
to watch out for already. If they really are going to implement that
rule, then they should set up a pager/buzzer for the coach to buzz the
refs. That way the refs don't have to watch/listen for the coaches.
|
|
|
