Hacker News Reader

Comment by kenjackson | Hacker News Reader

Basketball captures the tension and momentum in a livelier way. A team coming back from being down 15 is so much more exciting because it requires a sequence of offensive plays and defensive stops. You can feel the momentum shift as the team who was up suddenly can’t buy a basket.

The problem with basketball is last two minutes. What should be the most exciting part of the game becomes a drag with timeouts and intentional fouling.

View on HN

Agreed on the last 2 minutes of play.

The fouling is usually by the team trying to mount a last-moment come-back (stop the leading teams momentum, hope they miss the free-throws, and then get possession and shot to close the gap). Making penalties more costly would prevent this and likely just allow the leading team t to win. Though maybe they generally do anyways, so no real loss? I'd have to look at past game stats.

TOs - We could probably do without them in the last moments. That would shift focus from the coach to the team captain to coordinate play. Less set plays, more fluid teamwork. Possibly a net gain for the viewer with no real impact on the teams?

They should adopt for regular games what they’ve been doing for the all-star game the past two years, no clock in the fourth quarter, it’s a race to 24 points past the highest score when the quarter begins.

I was initially a fan of the elam ending, in theory. After watching the all-start game endings, I am staunchly opposed to it. The lack of a clock removes most of the tension in the end of a close game. Thinking further, it also removes the entire concept of the last shot / buzzer beater, one of the cornerstones of excitement in competitive basketball. When a shot goes up as the clock expires in a game that is within 1 or 2 points, you have the suspense and excitement of knowing that if the shooter hits that shot, his team wins. If he misses, his team loses. With the Elam ending, there is less excitement because the consequence for missing is that the game just continues & the other team now has a chance to score and possibly win.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com