Hoops

Thoughts on last quarter fouls

Sure wouldda liked a sideball option when Frye was here. I played in deliberate fouls and sideball option, but things were a little quicker then, you see.. A coach wouldn't be allowed to yell out ' foul him, foul him.'.. I used to care, but things have changed.

"koberulz that would never happen. Players would foul out."
Eventually, sure. But it'd take a while.

Chris "Ordinary Human Beings" Anstey ain't that bad with the ref whinging?

Uh, no, I think you're wrong there.

You do wonder how focussed a coach can be on their game plan if they're spending the whole team moaning about refs calls. Why don't they leave that to an assistant?

Problem is that hard D becomes way too much of a risk.

Fouls that don't involve a play at the ball are already a USF, it's pretty much all you can do. As long as the teams are sane about it (and with point differential mattering, at some point you have to play margin which helps in that regard), it's really not that bad.

What about one FT plus side possession for non-shooting fouls in the last 2 minutes?

"Or, go back to the old rule whereby the offence had the choice to take the side ball."
Offensive team takes the side ball, because that doesn't require giving up possession. Defensive team continues to foul unless they get a steal, with no offensive possessions in between to break it up a bit and no increase in the margin to discourage fouls.

That would make it worse, which is why they got rid of that option in the first place.

I do admit that on the pretty pointless last foul or two of the Perth-Melbourne game I was yelling something along the lines of "Anstey, you peanut, it's over, give it up already!"

"For me, its not the fouling that slows the game down. Its the timeouts that are used to advance the ball, particularly in nationally televised NBA games."
The fact that the NBA seems to have unlimited timeouts per team and a TV timeout every possession doesn't help.

FIBA's capping timeouts in the last minute or two to one, regardless of timeouts remaining, next year. Which will probably just result in teams taking it, because you're going to lose it anyway, thus potentially increasing the number of timeouts taken (as there are situations in which teams would end the game with timeouts still on the board).