In addition to the earlier trade deadline that Luke Adams wrote about this morning, the NBA approved several other significant rules changes today. Reducing the number of timeouts per game and moving the mandatory stopping points are among the alterations outlined by Tim Bontemps of The Washington Post.
To speed up the pace of play, especially in the final few minutes, the league’s Board of Governors has cut the maximum number of timeouts from 18 to 14. Also, mandatory TV timeouts have been moved to the seven- and three-minute marks of each quarter, and overtime timeouts have been reduced from three to two for each team.
The 20-second timeout has been eliminated, as Bontemps notes that they actually lasted 60 seconds while regular timeouts stretched to 90 seconds. The new rules consider all timeouts to be “team timeouts” that will last 75 seconds.
Other moves to speed up the game include enforcing the 15-minute limit for halftime and imposing delay-of-game penalties on shooters who walk behind the 3-point line between free throws.
“I would say, in this case, we’re pretty happy with the length of our game,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said at a news conference today. “We were more focused here on the pace and flow of the game. What we heard from our fans and heard from many of our teams was that the end of the games in particular were too choppy. I think since I was a kid, that’s an issue people have been talking about, the last two minutes of our game. . . . We think these new changes will have a significant impact, especially at the end of the game.”
Silver also announced an earlier start date to the season to cut down on back-to-back games. This year’s opening night will be October 17th.And although several stars moved from the Eastern to the Western Conference this summer, there are no immediate plans to shift the conference alignment or change the playoff format, relays Ohm Youngmisuk of ESPN.com.
It doesn’t look like they did anything to prevent all the intentional fouls in the last two minutes. that is the most annoying delay of game. the last two minutes of a game can sometimes take a half hour. who wants to watch free throw attempts for a half hour?
so change the game cause 5 dudes or so can’t make free throws? I hate it too but I couldn’t reward dudes for not making free throws
Yeah if you are playing basketball professionally then you should at least make 60% of your free throws even 70%. Then there for sure will be less fouls.
not really. what i’m seeing is teams responding by giving their best free throw shooters the ball on the inbound, and they foul anyway to stop the clock, and then hope to make a 3. 3 is more than 2. do that enough times and you could sneak past a team with a small lead. it’s a tactic, but it is incredibly boring, and makes the game too long.
They actually did change the rules on intention fouling players off ball in the final 2 minutes before last season and it was extremely effective. That’s why people stopped talking about that and moved on to talking about DNP-Rest
This is a start, but nowhere near where the game needs to go. Of all the major sports (and certainly I am including baseball here) basketball has bu far the worst rhythm and pacing. And instead of talking about the last two minutes of a basketball game we should be talking about the last 15+ minutes – as that is often how long it seems to take for these last two minutes to play out. Glad the league is seeing this as the very real issue that this is.
There’s nothing wrong with so called Hack-a-Shaq PRO BASKETBALL PLAYERS SHOULD BE ABLE TO MAKE FREE THROWS