Changes in the NBA You'd Like to See

Or as I call it the “So we can legally ignore Shaq dunking while really charging” rule..

And on the non-basketball side, fix the rule regarding medical retirement to avoid a Darius Miles like repeat…

Should be called only if the defender is able to get his feet set. I hate the “beating the other guy to the spot” and then flopping. The whole block/charge call is something that I think could be explained better. I would like to know what exactly constitutes a charge/block.

Nearly every team in the playoffs had major foul issues with their bigs. It puts too much premium on perimeter players.

Also fixing the really bad playoff referee jobs might be nice.

1.) Younger refs. I have a hard time believing guys like Dick Bavetta aren’t a little past their prime.

2.) Better use of instant replay. It would be nice if each team could use one or two of their full time outs to have the refs review a play. It wouldn’t take away from the flow of the game, since it’s just a time out anyway, and I’m sure it would make fans feel better about alleged favoritism. It might also discourage super-stars from trying to draw cheap fouls at the end of games. It would be risky for players to try and trick the refs knowing they might get to watch it in slow motion.

3.) I would like to see more non-calls on flops. Maybe even penalize guys somehow if flopping is clearly evident upon the review of games. I know it’s a little subjective, but so are technical fouls.

Once the offensive player leaves his feet, if the defender slides under him trying to draw the charge (Duke is NOTORIOUSLY BAD AT THIS) it’s an automatic block.

NBA:

Penalize Flopping!

Be able to review shots that were at the buzzer of the shot clock (maybe they instituted this already?)

Institute a draft rule like they have for baseball: either go pro right out of high school, or wait until your Junior year. This one and done stuff sucks IMO. The NCAA would be much better off if given three years with it’s stars (think of the hype Curry and Griffin had this year, made me want to watch College Basketball) instead of one. Even if that means losing out on the elite of the elite like Oden, Rose, Durant, etc.

Flopping. This was supposed to be addressed this season but I have not noticed even the slightest of improvement. When a player is notorious for flopping (cough Varajao cough) why not do something about it? Call a technical just once and it would probably help a whole lot.

The consistency of foul calling. Superstar calls have gotten way out of hand. Watching the playoffs is miserable unless the team you are rooting for has LeBron or Kobe. I want to see the star players get called for the same things others do. Refs turn their backs far too often to avoid seeing a foul committed by them.

Flagrant Fouls/Technicals. We all realized the definition of a Flagrant 1 and 2 are not clear thanks to the infamous Rudy Foul. The playoffs have also been a pretty evident example for both technicals and flagrants. There have been quite a few fouls upgraded to flagrants and plenty of technicals rescinded.

I don’t like how more teams make the playoffs than don’t make it. If we cut the number of teams in each conference from 8 to 6 that would make the playoffs a lot more interesting.

Stats on Refs, updated stat columns (assist credit given to a player if the assisted player is fouled, how often a player is fouled, 2 pt fg% that doesn’t include 3s, 3pt fg% that doesnt include end of quarter heaves

1) Kobe and LaBron have to play in socks, no shoes.
2) Shaq is not allowed closer than 10 feet from the basket.
3) Each team would be required to play at least three games a season in Hilo.

A tech gets you 2minutes of 4 on 5 play.
Coaches jump for opening tip.

1) Replays where really the whole action can be reviewed. E.g. not only if a shooter was behind the three-point line, but also if he released it within the 24 seconds which currently only can be done when the time in a quarter expires. That drives me crazy (see Finley, Michael in the game against Sacramento) because it’s obvious and I suppose the refs see they blew the call but can’t do anything about it. Either the crew chief can trigger a review, or maybe we need to introduce a coaching challenge.
2) A head umpire, who sits further away and/or watches the game on a monitor
3) A new generation of well-trained, well-compensated refs. Not to discriminate against people born before 1955, but that strikes me as a bad tradeoff in experience vs. being in the right position to make a call.
4) Accountability/transparency. The crew chief has to answer questions in the press conference like the coaches and top players. Also more information about which crew was assigned to which games, how many calls they made for home and away team, etc. I know fans track this and pundits start calling for it (Simmons), but the league should provide this itself. They don’t have to say who they think are the best refs (people will decide that by themselves seeing who gets to call the important and late matchups), just make the whole “we have the best-metricized group of employees in the world” claim more valid.
5) This hopefully leading to more consistency, i.e. calls made less dependent on personal preference of a ref, game situation, and players and teams involved. When in doubt, let the players decide the outcome of a game a bit like in the NHL. In a fascinating game 7 Boston vs. Carolina the refs swallowed their whistles and a player would have had to commit bloody murder to cause a decisive penalty or suspension.
6) Education of the public. A TV show (segment) on NBA TV where a retired ref or supervisor explains the rules regarding a specific situation, why a certain call was made – or why it was the wrong call.

On a positive note, one thing I learned about officiating in the playoffs that I thought was brilliant:
Refs in the playoffs get compensated by series, not by game. Thus they have no financial incentive to extend a series to say 5 or 7 games.

1. Flopping is technical. It is terrible for the league. That would stop it pretty quickly.
2. 2 Challenge Flags for coaches (anything is reviewable)
3. Violet Palmer and Steve Javie are never allowed to officiate another Blazer game.

OKC and Portland and Minn should not be in the same division.

I really don’t understand these stop-start travel calls. Outlaw tends to pick them when he’s held the ball after receiving a pass than puts down the dribble to make a move and suddenly its a travel…and I don’t even mean picking up the wrong pivot foot, because usually the ball is caught flat footed and you can make either foot your pivot foot.

No replay
No replay
and No replay.

If better officials are needed, fine, fix that. If better definition of the rules is needed, fine, fix that. If more oversight, review and disclosure is needed, fine, fix that.

But don’t slow down the game with replay just to pacify the fans outrage at problems that stem from things that won’t be fixed by replay.

I believe that the refs are an integral part of the game and their call is “right”. That doesn’t mean correct, but for that game and that moment in time, it is right.

But that will never happen

What is the most boring thing in bball? Free throws! Foul one point and the ball back

We need more playoffs. 2 30 game seasons each year with play offs and finals. Twice the playoff fun

- eliminate the LeBron rules (superstar rules). He gets by with pretty much anything he wants to do, including bulling his way to the basket. Superstars also seem to be able to take, not one but two extra steps.

- enforce the traveling rules please. Usually, tucking the ball in your arms like a running back results in a travel but rarely gets called.
   
- agree with the DreamShake guy about correctly calling fouls when the shooter initiates contact with the defender after the shot. Hate that. (call it the Billups rule).

- a rule to minimize all the wrestling that goes on with the bigs. This has gotten so out of hand. And why isn’t holding on to a opposing player’s jersey a foul? Jeesh.

- follow the same rules in in the playoffs as in regular season.

- do something about the local guys in charge of the time clock, where they can cause a second to last an eternity. There was no way Brandon’s miracle shot against Houston
got off in time. Same with that shot LeBron took with one second remaining to win game two against Orlando.

The NBA is by far my favorite sport of them all but I could go on and on about the crappy rules and the enforcement of them. But for the sake of brevity, I’ll stop here.

goal tending in general really torques me… object of game ? put ball in basket…. why are there rules about how you do this? always thought that was one of the dumber rules….

give me a 4th referree who’s job is to actually make the call after a 5 secon review during the five seconds after the floor ref’s choked on their whistles…. but this ref will sit up in a sky box and use film and have no whistle, but is an end all be all and can over ride any blown call…..

Consistancy from the silly ref’s…. tha’d be nice.

other than that it’d be the most perfect game in the world… oh…. reduce the fine for crackin a guy across the jaw for talkin smack……

Sticking a foot under the jump shooter. We can all thank Bruce Bowen for starting this practice.

Got to make the first one to get the second one.

should be 4 pts.

ultimate drama!

8 fouls per player

One of my pet peeves is that they figure the “heave” into the three-point shooting statistics. It’s easily removed from the shooting numbers, and is at other levels of competition.

It artificially deflates shooting percentages, namely of Sergio and Blake.

Allow players to put the ball in the basket.

And clarify traveling… the rule book is a joke on this.

There’s a lot of other small things, but most is okay.

As for what Tom Martin wants,
1. I think the pump-fake fouls have gotten better the past few years (Billups doesn’t get away with what Reggie Miller used too),
2. The charging foul is detailed correctly (but not called correctly all the time. it’s a tough call)
3. Should the same rules be applied to fronting or not? Offensive players can only push so much, and the defense can only grab so much. What’s there to clarify?

Seriously, i think there’s a huge issue with reffing.

1.) Accountability
2.) Fresh blood brought up from the D-league and trained there.
3.) Consistency – Best method training and standarization.
4.) Ability to review plays (with restrictions in place so it’s not overly abused. three limit use or something)
5.) Allow people to play through more often.
6.) I like the retirement age suggested above, or testing for eye, hearing, coordination or whatever. You wouldn’t take an 80 year old player because the ability isn’t there, but you might take a 40 year old player if their skill level and experience/savvy is high.
7.) Openness in the picking of ref’s for games. Is it random for regular season? Is it based on some sort of correct call record over the season? It really should be.

… and if not conferences, at least divisions. The “we’re going to make divisions matter more for playoff positioning” rules were the 180-degree wrong direction to take. The divisions don’t matter and nobody wants them to matter.

When I check the standings, if the web page gives me division standings default, I get annoyed and have to click on conference standings. In the old days, I’d have to make my own standings on a pad of paper just to figure out the de facto Conference standings.

All of this needs to end. Just make an equitable schedule wherein each team plays each of the other teams a fair number of times. (clarified by my next two changes)

Then – gasp – the top 16 teams make the playoffs. 1 v. 16, 2 v 15, etc. Play it!

2. Expand the number of teams to 32. It’s a power of 2, so it’s elegant. With two more cities involved in the NBA, more people get invested in the league. It’s also easier on scheduling as…

3. Reduce the number of regular season games to 62. Play each of the other 31 teams home and home. 62 games is enough to determine who should be seeded where. This will reduce wear and tear on the players bodies, leading (hopefully) to healthier players on the floor. More rested. Less injuries and exhaustion.

I’ve got lots more things I’d change, briefly:
4. less piped in music & noise at the arenas, especially the Rose Garden.

5. Give me my game time beer back. $8.50 for a drink might lead to more sober crowds, but many of us just scoff and figure we can have a beer when we get home. Or, for the price of two beers at the RG, I can go to freddies and get myself enough beer to put myself in the hospital. Either way – just make the beers a fair price.

6. Force Donald Sterling to sell the Clippers and let the franchise move to a city that needs one. Like Seattle. Or Pittsburgh. (Or Portland after Allen rips our Blazers away to ‘heal’ Seattle and reduce his and Nate’s commute.)

I might be posting again later… I’d change a lot of things.

The fact that guys that don’t play continue to bog down the SC’s of teams that would otherwise be able to move on (there should be a penalty for termination and protection to some extent for the players) hurts the league a ton!

Thoughts on the Dreamshake post:

1. I think Kobe does it more than Billups, but every smart player, including BRoy and Rudy do it and it is stupid. I completely agree with his suggestions. If you have to move into a player who is in the air to draw contact, it should be an offensive foul.

I’d expand that one to say that if the offensive player initiates the contact (anywhere on the floor), it can’t be a foul on the defender. That would also take care of blocking fouls inside the “restricted area” because someone has his heel on the line.

2. This one just requires the refs to be more consistent and let a bit more contact go. I’d generally like to see a little more contact allowed.

3. He was actually some what fair, saying Pryz got called for nothing sometimes. The refs clearly didn’t know how to call post positioning and were all over the map. If defining what is ok and what isn’t helps, I’m for it. However, I’d hate to see fine print rules change the entire way the game is played.

Things like stepping out of bounds and not beating a shot clock could be called accurately with computers right now. That would free up the refs’ eyeballs to spend more time looking at more important things. Eventually more and more types of calls could be made by computer, and we’d have truly objective reffing.

Call it the D-Wade rule-I got sick of him in the Finals just flinging himself into the lane with little chance of getting a decent shot off, knowing that someone would bump him and he’d go to the line. t Kinda goes with not letting the offensive player jump into the defender after a pump fake.

I actually like how the NBA interprets the block/charge call nowadays-it used to be that the defender had to be a total statue, which is all but impossible. I think the defender has just as much right to a spot on the court as the offensive player, so if he gets his body there first and the offensive players runs into him, that should be a charge.

1) Cheap beer in the arena. Each ticket should entitle you to one free pint; if you bring children to the game, you get to drink theirs. Subsequent beers should cost no more than $5 a pint—what I would expect to pay in a really nice restaurant.
2) Less, er, clutter on the cheerleaders.
3) The court should be lubed like a bowling lane, and the players forced to wear really ugly shoes. Ben would lose his favorite hobby, of course, but the game would be more fun to watch—like football in the snow.

1. Institute a technical foul for flopping. An attempted charge-draw is not a flop, but the whole ridiculous Euro-soccer-flop-on-simulated-contact trend needs to be harshly eliminated.

2. Stop calling technical fouls for on-floor contact. A loose ball foul is a loose ball foul — call them as such. Technicals are for unsportsmanlike conduct ONLY.

3. Ditch the automatic suspensions for technicals in the playoffs. These rules ONLY impact teams that go into the Finals, when they should NOT come into play. The league knows it has a problem here, which is why they have been rescinding Ts like mad men late in the playoffs. Enough already — just admit that the automatic suspension rule in the playoff was ill conceived.

4. Solidify the flagrant foul rules. NORMAL HARD CONTACT should NOT be a flagrant foul. DANGEROUS hard contact or UNNECESSARY VIOLENT contact not directed AT THE BALL should be.

That’s four.

One thing I would like to see is the 3 second rule enforced.maybe we need a ref that watches the key area he can be in charge of watching the restricted area and players moving in and out of the key,

At the end of each month, players who are noted floppers (Varejao, Nocioni, Raja Bell, etc.) are then forced to endure a 30 minute steel cage match with Ron Artest.

I’m not a big fan of the late-game foul-for-possession strategy. I feel that the last few minutes of a game drag on way too late with a commercial every 30 seconds and timeouts, fouls, and free throws just taking way too long. If you watch old school games you see that the games went much faster at the ends.

This is my idea for changing that scenario: make all non-shooting fouls in the last few minutes of the game (besides the foul to give) result in one foul shot and the ball back. Simple rule, major acceleration of the end of games. Who wants to watch free throws decide a game? Not me.

The NBA’s biggest problems are not with the actual game of basketball. It’s biggest problems are:

1. The Salary Cap is too big. Players make entirely too much, which leads owners to charge more for tickets (at least that’s the logic behind the ridiculously high ticket prices). If that means the season needs to be shorten then so be it.

2. They need a legitimate drug testing program administered by a third party, that holds both the player and the league responsible for violations. I want to have faith that this isn’t a problem, but faith only takes me so far, beyond that I need facts.

Those are the two big ones. The last one would probably be:

3. Consistent officiating. For me this has only gotten worse this post season. What is a foul anymore? I have no idea and I doubt the players know either, heck I doubt the refs know what I foul is. I don’t really care what they decide on as long as it’s consistent for the entire length of the game and equal for everyone in the game.

on several different talent levels like MLB. Expand the roster size to allow populating the lower leagues. Give the kids a chance to play rather than riding the bench all season. Like last season – Bayless could have been on our minor league team and played every game – we could have called him up when Blake went down. Shav would get to play, Ruffin would get to play.

This would allow rescinding the one year of college rule. These kids don’t need college per se, they need coaching and experience against similar competition. College is important to some of the players (JJack, Oden & others) and maybe there could be bonuses in their contracts for completing a degree or a certain number of credits.

It would also allow more roster flexibility. We didn’t go for the medical exception for Raef (if we were eligible) but since he didn’t even stay in town it was silly to have him count against our 15 man roster. Currently his spot would have been used by yet another bench warmer, but with a minor league we could have been developing one more youngster or letting an older guy play out his career.

I ask if there is a good way to apply this to reffing.

Since the goal of refs is to make good calls based on the rules, maybe a system could be a in place where after the game the an independent group goes over the entire game with a fine tooth comb and counts all the good calls and bad calls and keeps an eye out for no calls as well. Then we have a pay system based on their performance for each game. In addition make all of this available online so that the process is completely transparent.

Move the Sonics back to Seattle.

….and place them in stationary positions at both ends of the court. When one is in motion, one loses perspective for the infractions that may or may not be occurring. I think part of the reason the officials are so suspect (outside of that whole one of them was fixing games thing) is that they are not objective observers, but rather are reacting to the action on the court. Having an individual who remains still and observes on either end could serve to clean up the game and make it more consistent.

Oh, and if someone would please slap some humility into David Stearn, that would be FANTASTIC!

Substitutions on the fly. You have to wait on the bench until someone your replacement makes it to the bench, and then you can run right in. No more waiting for timeouts or stoppages to get the guys you want in there. Too many men on the court is already a technical foul. Why not put it to better use? :)

Have a team use a timeout to ask the refs to review a play so it doesn’t get out of hand, but there is NO reason that the refs shouldn’t review close calls, especially near the end of the game, and especially if a team is willing to use up one of their more valuable resources to simply get a chance at the play looked at more objectively, while not in the heat of the moment, and with better viewpoints.

The NFL was improved IMMENSELY by allowing the refs to use instant replay if it was close. Why can’t the NBA follow?

Also, if a player flops too much, and more importantly, really obviously flops, the NBA should be able to give a warning to that player. Don’t need to fine, don’t even need to penalize, but a warning means that the refs know that this guy has a history of flopping, and will watch closely on plays involving that player. What this would do is leave players that occasionally flop alone, but really crack down on those perpetual floppers that everyone hates.

1. Enforce the traveling rule as it’s written. No more crab dribbles, no more lazy strolls across the lane and no more dancing under the basket.

2. Allow “goal-tending.” Who cares if the ball is on its way down? The defense should be able to stop it from going in.

3. Every foul past the fifth one earns the fouled player two or three shots plus the ball. I’d like to see Oden play as many minutes as his conditioning allows and don’t like coaches taking dudes out in the first quarter due to foul trouble.

Extras:
4. Call the game the same for every player. No more “Oh no, Kobe missed a shot. He must’ve been fouled” calls. No more “Wade tossing the ball at the basket after barreling down the lane” calls.

5. Call moving picks.

6. Timeouts do not let you advance the ball. If you call a TO in the backcourt then you get to start with the ball there.

7. No intentional contact allowed between players. Basketball is ideally a non-contact sport. That means no hand on the back of a dude backing down.

Let guards play D. Keep big men out of foul trouble. Shaq could never have gotten to the legendary status he enjoys if he was playing with the same retarded rules that Oden and Howard are having to play with. (I know Howard is doing well despite, and Oden hasn’t, but look at the experience differential before you disagree. Howard as a rookie in the same situation would probably perform the same)

It might lower the scoring averages again, but seriously, do we really need teams scoring 150+ in a regulation game consecutively? No, even if they are fun to watch. Let the game be about skill again.

so maybe the idea really blows. How about they add a fourth ref who was employed by the player’s association?