timeouts by digit removal proposal

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The right way. I mean yeah I think good coaching involves not doing things wrong.

There is a right way of doing things in college basketball... pic.twitter.com/4H2Csts22X

— Jordan Sperber (@hoopvision68) April 19, 2021

Will Wade might disagree.

I mean he does look like Michael Rapaport. A viral video of Brian Scalabrine housing some teenager who challenged him spurred this entertaining NYT article on the phenomenon of Gym Dudes stepping to professional athletes. WNBA player Cheyenne Parker:

When asked why amateurs were so willing to challenge journeymen basketball players, Parker said: “The same reason why a guy that I would never, ever give a chance to, still has that confidence to come and approach me and ask for my number. You know? It’s the same type of confidence that these people have to even think that they can beat a professional.”

Also, Brian Scalabrine has issues!

He said professional athletes, even retired ones, have an extra gear that an average person cannot tap into. He referred to it as the “dark place.”

“I would always say things, like in a game, ‘If I miss this next shot, my kids are going to die,’” Scalabrine said. “I would say that to myself, just to get through, just to put the pressure so I can lock in and make the shot.”

Scalabrine gets it more than most because he looks more like Seth Rogen than a person who does basketball good.

[After THE JUMP: you should have to cut off a finger to call timeout]

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Please do not mention the Star Wars. Results will be unpredictable and depressing. If Star Wars comes up try to change the subject to something like Michigan… uh… baseball? Hockey and basketball recruiting?

Bleargh. Michigan canceled a home and home with UCLA for this:

The University of Michigan Athletic Department announced Thursday (Jan. 30) the addition of the University of Connecticut to the non-conference football schedule in 2022. The Wolverines and Huskies will meet on the gridiron during the third week of the season, Sept. 17, 2022, at Michigan Stadium.

That completes a nonconference schedule of Colorado State, Hawaii, and UConn. The home schedule adds Maryland, PSU, Nebraska, Illinois, and Indiana. I really don't understand why Michigan had to cancel UCLA when they already had 7 home games. Not a great look for Warde Manuel.

Welcome to the revolution. John Gasaway on timeouts:

We already have media timeouts and multiple reviews in crunch time. That’s enough. There should be zero timeouts.

Prepare your team. Let’s see who wins.

— John Gasaway (@JohnGasaway) January 29, 2020

That's even more draconian than my proposal, which would allow timeouts if a coach shears off one of his digits and hands it to a ref. (Or, in more extreme cases, delegates an assistant to do so.) Hopefully he moderates his views slightly going forward.

[After THE JUMP: Kobe King takes are bad]

Previously: hockey, soccer.

[Patrick Barron]

10. Use advantage calls on fast breaks.

Dunks are the best. On this we can all agree. Cynical fouls to prevent dunks are the worst, and there's a model out there for preventing them. Soccer refs will let fouls go if the team fouled seems to have an advantageous position. Basketball should adopt this for situations where there is about to be a breakaway dunk.

9. Eliminate hack-a-blank.

Allow teams to take the ball out of bounds with a reset shot clock instead of shooting free throws on a non-shooting foul. Like the previous bullet this is an attempt to reduce the number of situations where someone is intentionally violating the rules to their advantage. Don't @ me about how players who can't shoot free throws shouldn't be protected. Rules exist to make the flow of a game more pleasant to watch, and when they fail that they should be changed.

8. Get rid of the three-second call.

Nobody calls it. Its purpose has always been mysterious. The rationale is nonsensical: "open up the offense by restricting what offensive players can do." Clogging the lane is the least of modern basketball's concerns.

7. For the love of God please figure out how to call a charge.

Nobody knows what a charge is. I don't know, and you don't know, and refs don't know, and players don't know. The NCAA made things infinitely worse a couple years back with a change that made things even more confusing; one year of that was enough.

Charges get a bad rap. They're very dramatic. There's a dude on the ground fist-pumping; Teddy Valentine has recruited a crew of Busby Berkeley dancers, all of whom are pointing to the other end of the floor theatrically; the offender is grasping the basketball disdainfully and trying to murder the entire arena with his eyes. Duke ruined them for everybody, but now that there's a restricted circle their preferred tactic is no longer valid.

My suggestion on charges is to make the rule as simple as possible. If a player is moving parallel to the basket, outside of the circle, and gets plowed in the chest by an opponent who still has the ball, it's a charge. Glancing contact is a block. Taking a charge-type substance when the player in question has already released the ball is a no-call. Maybe it would need some tweaks, but the current regime is as close to completely random as possible.

6. No timeouts on out-of-bounds plays.

The final proposal here is the best plan I have to stop the scourge of timeouts, but if people continue to insist on having a break for tea and scones every ten seconds in the waning moments of a close game there are still some improvements that can be made. Number one is eliminating timeouts that come one nanosecond before a five-second call on inbounds plays. In all cases these timeouts reduce the drama of a game, because they prevent the team that's pressing from their shot at a critical turnover. Infuriatingly, they almost always come in the immediate aftermath of another timeout.

Say no to timeouts, in all their forms. But especially this one.

5. Adopt a draft and follow system.

This is discussed in more detail in a previous post. The upshot is that the NBA should move to a style of drafting closer to the NHL model, where everyone is automatically eligible for the draft. This allows drafted players to retain NCAA eligibility and prevents a lot of the consequences of bad draft entry decisions. I also suggest that NBA teams should have to offer longer contracts when they want to sign younger prospects—five year right out of high school, four after one year of college, etc.—and that drafted college players should be able to participate in NBA summer league.

4. Promotion and relegation for the NBA.

People keep talking about this in MLS, where it is dubiously viable and could lead to teams folding. The NBA's situation is vastly different, with an enormous new TV contract and the ability to support teams in Sacramento, Oklahoma City, and the like. The NBA also has an enormous tanking problem. Way too many NBA games are functionally exhibitions. Promotion and relegation fixes that.

Existing team owners looking to protect their franchise value could be a hurdle, but adding, say, ten expansion franchises and gradually splitting into two leagues of 20 teams would bring in enormous expansion fees, enough to offset the possibility of ending up in NBA 2.

3. Okay if you don't want to do that, something else to fix tanking.

First picks in the draft go to the winners of a post-season competition between teams that missed the playoffs. There are 14. The three best and three worst teams are omitted from an eight-team single-elimination tournament that gets played in the latter stages of the NBA playoffs. There is a third place game; top three get the top three slots in the draft.

This is more content to get money from. It turns the bottom three slots in the league into poison to be avoided, instantly upping the drama for the 8 teams at the bottom who are otherwise trying to lose games.

2. Goaltending is legal if you're 5'9" or shorter.

THIS WOULD BE AWESOME.

Sorry, Tom, you've got way too many fingers to call timeout [Bryan Fuller]

1. Coaches can only call timeout by cutting off one of their digits and handing it to the referee.

I admit my previous no-timeouts-ever stance was too radical. In the spirit of compromise, let us allow for timeouts if coaches are willing to take garden shears to their toes and fingers. If the situation truly calls for a little huddle on the sideline where the coach can remind his players to "play good" and "show effort", all it requires is one sickening moment of shredding flesh and cracking bone that forever alters a man. Should a long-time coach be so mutilated that he can no longer operate a pair of garden shears, a Make-a-Wish child can execute the act for him.

It is in this way timeouts can be responsibly managed.