[Lowe]: New kind of crunch time has NBA luminaries excited

Rather have a 4 point or 5 point line.

 

Eliminating garbage time means that end of bench guys would play much less.

 

I'm trying to wrap my head around this (I really should take up alcohol again - it would help). From what I can figure, any team towards the end of a game could be behind a lot, but make it up and win if they could pull off the team equivalent of McGrady's "13 in 33" thingy?



Had to post it just for the "flavor." Say what you will about McGrady, and I've criticized him a lot, this sequence remains one of the most exciting stretches of individual play I've see in a game, and when it counted the most.

 

There are many ripple effects. This is one of them.

 

I was actually going to point this out as a game that worked under desperation foul strategy, which Elam Ending is trying to fix.

keep in mind, that last 35 seconds took forever to finish (like 30 minutes) ... I was there. That was "boring" desperation fouling ("that rarely works"--per Elam) that the Elam ending is trying to prevent. Thousands of ppl left due to the boredom of watching Spurs go to the line (and made them all), so Spurs scored their 7 points in Elam time, anyhow.

imo, if you like the McGrady ending, then you are actually saying you don't want the Elam ending. The success of the McGrady ending is why teams keep trying it, and is why Elam created the new ending, because it rarely works and is boring.

The score was 73-64 when the first ball-stoppage occurred under 3-minutes...at 2:23. So, first to 80 wins. Spurs reached 80 first. (fwiw: I'm betting Popovich creates a ball-stoppage -- as routine Elam strategy by a team with a big lead -- at exactly the 3:00 mark, when they are up by 11 points -- 73-62.)

Keep in mind, since Popovich surely stops play with an 11-point lead (to start Elam-time sooner), McGrady's 13 points wouldn't be enough. Rockets would need 18 points to win. We'd need an 18-6 ending.

As it so happened, it was a 15-7 ending, for the Spurs' win.

 

I'm going to guess that Coaches just transfer distasteful strategies to 3-minutes earlier, prior to when Elam occurs. It will be very important to be as close as possible with Elam time starts, and (like NFL overtime), it will be a rather large advantage to have the ball first when Elam time starts.

So, coaches who are down by big number might do their current desperation fouling strategy prior to the 3-minute mark to get score as close as possible...employing 3s for 2s strategy. Then, when the 3 minute mark goes past, the team with the lead will want Elam time to start as soon as possible, and with them having the ball.

Strategies:

• When needing a big comeback, transfer desperation fouling strategies to prior to the 3 minute mark, so do we even eliminate it much. If desperation fouling is just transferred to a different time, then changing the rules is not warranted....despite the possibility we like the Elam ending more.
  
  That is: Instead of "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." It becomes: "If you can't fix it, don't try."
  
  
• Having the ball first in Elam time is important. (Elam time starts at first play stoppage.) Teams behind might purposely foul to get ball first, despite FTs. Teams ahead will call timeout to lock in the lead and retain ball. With score tied, prior to 3-minute mark, teams will jockey to have ball first when 3-minute mark is reached, so they can stop the clock and have ball first in Elam time. How they jockey for ball control at 3-min mark will be interesting, and it might be boring.

 

The foul game virtually never works, you would almost always just put yourself further down by trying it. The only reason it comes close to working sometimes is because the winning team goes into their "prevent" defense I.E. give them 2, don't foul and stop the clock, which teams wouldn't do in this circumstance. It's an absolute desperation move, that's only forced by a hard clock running down.

The would be no desperation, just keep getting stops. Which is much more likely to work. There would be more exciting late game comebacks.

 

Consider for a second how valuable it will be to have the lead and the ball when Elam time starts. You only need 7pts. Now, consider that coaches will likely change strategy of play in the last minutes of when "they are forced by a hard clock running down" prior to Elam time.

How will those last few minutes of game clock change? Don't you think Popovich will change his strategy based on score in the last two minutes prior to Elam time?

I'm saying the desperation strategies might still persist.

Look at it this way: look at it as Elam time is like an Overtime. We don't quite yet know what Coaches will do prior to Elam time, but we do know analytics will prove that it is best to lock in a lead and have the ball first when Elam "Overtime" begins.

I'm not thinking about whether Elam ending will be more exciting or not; I'm interesting in talking about whether coaches will change their play prior to Elam time, and how, in such a way that Elam time doesn't really fix the problem it was invented to fix. Will it just transfer existing strategies of playing catch-up to an earlier time in the game? Teams will surely transfer 2-for-1 strategy to prior to Elam time. What other clock-mgmt strategies and comeback strategies that Elam is trying to stop, will just be transferred to earlier?

 

The desperation before Elam time will never be as acute as the current game clock system. The game clock is much harsher than the disadvantage of falling behind and not getting the ball first. As someone has pointed out, making defensive stops always has a higher probability of success than trying to come back in a limited time.

And to further dissipate the desperation, you could lengthen the Elam time and/or raise the target score so that getting the ball first would not have such a great advantage. You could also fix part of it by only allowing certain types of ball stoppage as a starting point of Elam time to eliminate intentional stoppage such as timeout or intentional foul.

 

If we are going to shift the conversation to changing the Elam rules, then I’ll just bow out. This conversation will get boring quickly. Let’s just talk about the rules in place, as Elam used analytics to choose 3 minutes and 7 pts.

Lengthening Elam time doesn’t change anything, as there is no such thing as Elam “time.” I think you mean shortening regulation time..

But if you shorten reg time too much, you take away advantages deeper teams have with greater benches. Don’t change things too much or things will change WAY too much in unpredictable ways that were never intended.

Back to the rule as written: I sgree that a +7 Overtine target score is not as harsh as current endings..just saying 7pts makes the score significant at the end, enough to change strategies leading up to the Elam Overtime

 

I was suggesting ways that could fix the issues you raised. I don't know how Elam came up with the 3 min 7 pts numbers and what the advantages of those numbers are. I thought the discussion was whether this kind of system could bring positive changes to the game. Any rule change will privilege some types of team. Team building strategies will adjust to it after a while.

I guess it is a balancing act. You don't want to make the score so insignificant the regulation time becomes virtually meaningless. But you also want to soften the harshness of the end time to minimize (if not entirely eliminate) desperation tactics. That is the whole point of the rule, isn't it?

 

Difference is, pickup games are for fun and people have some sort of playgroubd honor. There's a reason game clocks and the shot clock were invented, rather than raising the quality of play removing these would result in a lot of loop holes opponents can exploit like dribbling for 15 mins until a crack in the defense shows itself.

 

I think it's a bad idea because it yet again rewards offensive juggernauts. The game is already so heavily tilted in favor of offense rather than defense. Under the current system, shutting down an opposing team within the parameters of the game clock is a victory. If the Elam rule went into effect, teams would be inclined to bench their defenders for the "crunch time shootout" thereby cheapening the previous 45 minutes.

 

I think in the Elam crunch time, offense is more important for the leading team and defense is more important for the trailing team. If you are leading, you want to trade baskets until you get to the target score. If you are trailing, you need defensive stops to catch up.