Adam Silver Is Finally Fixing One Glaring Issue That Is Ruining NBA Games And It's About Damn Time
Lost in all my depression caused by closing my eyes and reliving a 39-14 Celtics 3rd quarter from the other night, I almost forgot about some of the news we got right before Game 1 tipped off in regards to some rule changes/new additions to the future of the league. Some are better than others, so let's just take a quick look, shall we?
THANK YOU ADAM SILVER AND THE BOARD OF GOVERNORS!!
When we first learned of the rule changes entering this current year where the refs were no longer going to bail out the offensive player for trying some bullshit foul baiting tactics (that sure lasted long huh!), I wrote at the time that the one thing I wished they would have addressed was the "take foul". It's easily one of the worst parts of an NBA game. You know what I want as a fan? Fastbreaks. I want lobs and awesome dunks. You know what kills that? The take foul. It's horrendous and frankly should be punishable by death. I get why players do it, to them it's whatever. Stop the break, stop the easy buckets and just accept the team foul. But in terms of what it does to the product? It stinks.
Personally, I would have loved for them to go the FIBA route with this play. They deem that foul "unsportsmanlike" and you get 2 FTA and possession. I suppose a nice compromise is 1 shot and the ball since that's already going on in the G League but I say if they really want to eliminate it fully they should take it up a notch. Make it a flagrant 1 or some shit. Or give the player a tech. I know there's no way that passes a vote, but still. I want this shit removed from games completely.
We know Adam Silver cares deeply about how his product is perceived, so it's nice to see in back to back seasons he's making a legit effort to rid the game of non-basketball bullshit. The jumping into defenders, the take foul, it's all stuff that has no business being in the NBA game. If you fuck up and turn the ball over, you should have to sprint your ass back on defense and prevent a bucket. The take foul is weak. It's smart given what the rules currently allow, but it's a soft move. I don't care who your favorite team is, what I just said is not debatable. I cannot think of one person that actually thinks the take foul is good for the game and should continue. Clean it up.
This certainly should surprise nobody. With how successful the Play In Tournament has been, it was only a matter of time before we got a Shams tweet like this. The NBA loves money and they will do whatever they can in an effort to make as much of it as possible. Ratings for the Play In must have been great, so anyone who was paying attention knew some sort of inseason tournament was next. Silver had floated that idea before, and while we don't have the details just yet, I'm conflicted.
On one hand, different doesn't always mean bad. There may have been some resistance against the Play In and that clearly works and is now here to stay. I just don't know if I like this idea. I guess it could be cool if there's some real value in winning the whole thing, but what could that be? You can't really have any sort of playoff implications, because what if the team that wins the tournament doesn't make the playoffs. Same thing with any sort of draft compensation. What if the team that wins isn't in the lottery or something? Would players really give a shit if the prize was just money? For example, let's you're a max player. Would you risk playing extra games that might not count towards the regular season all for some prize money? If the league cares so much about load management, are they going to force teams to play all their guys? Are they going to trim the total amount of games just to fit this in? There are so many questions and unknowns I guess we'll have to just wait and see, but I'm skeptical.
I can understand looking for ways to keep casual fans interested in the dog days of the NBA season. I think it's like me and 5 other people that are actually watching every single game in January. If you think I'm going to miss DET vs SAC you're out of your mind. But I'm severely deranged. I am not normal. The NBA doesn't have to do anything for me to care about every game of the season, so this isn't really about attracting fans like me.
It seems like Silver is obsessed with following a similar path to soccer and that's cool and all, but that takes a lonnnnnnnng time to establish that sort of tradition where people actually give a shit. It's not like 2023-24 is all that far away, so I'm interested to hear the specifics of what this could entail. I'm not ruling out that it could work or even be fun, but my initial instinct is more that they should find ways to trim the schedule so guys don't get hurt/teams don't load manage and you can cut down on the number of B2Bs rather than find a way to just make more money. I'm not getting any of that revenue so what the hell do I care.
So kudos to Silver & Co for at least removing the take foul from our lives. That's the most important thing we got from these Shams bombs. The in season tournament will probably get push back initially and then people will learn to live with it, just like we do for everything that changes in our lives. Remember how mad you got over Twitter updates? Same thing applies here.