So has the NFL

 

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I believe that your question was... does fouling at the end of the game work.

The answer is... often enough that teams keep doing it.

Its not that the players play half assed the first 3 and 3/4 of games, its that they play half assed the first 3/4 of the season. Even the players admit they barely try before playoff push comes.

 

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Thats pretty ridiculous. Teams try as hard as they can to get the #1 seed and HCA for the playoffs. Home court is huge.

 

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Yep, it was obvious.

 

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That's the stupidest thing I"ve ever read (I mean besides a 300+ pound guy claiming he's not fat, just "Good German Stock". You're telling me the Jordan era, specifically the 92-93 season wasn't one of the greatest runs any sport has ever had? You actually preferred the "bad boys" pistons to the emergence of the greatest basketball player of all time?

Right now, the NBA has 4 of the 10 most marketable players in any U.S. sport. Granted, the compressed schedule has hurt the quality of play, but it has also led to some quirky and entertaining as hell games.

 

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If you foul an opponent, you immediately stop the clock, and they can only get 1-2 points off of their possession (at the NBA level players rarely miss both free throws), then you have a chance at 2-3 points. You also have the chance, at each inbound pass, for them to mess up and turnover the ball, so you have the chance at a 2-3 point swing (0 for them).

This exchange takes only about 8-10 seconds (you foul them immediately on inbound, run a quick play) hence you could run this 5-6 times in the last minute. If you don't foul, the team that is ahead will just run down the clock. If you are down by 6 and run a series of successful plays, you could feasibly crawl up to a tie or win. Sort of like how NFL teams do onside kicks.

I don't think this really makes the game boring at all. It's not like it takes that long. It can be pretty exciting sometimes, as the team that is behind will run quick, pre-set plays, more akin to football. It's a different playstyle/strategy than the other 46~ minutes of the game.


Most hosts do not hate the NBA nor consider it useless for the first 3.5 quarters of the game (Game-wise, that is very far from the truth).

 

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so no one has any real info on how often it works?

i saw a team doing it down by 6...they lost by like 13 or something like that.

similar in hockey...it's not that often that teams pull off a win by pulling the goalie...but they do it a lot.

in that case, coming from a coach, it's a case of being a long shot when losing anyhow.

 

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why play 4 quarters?

give each team 100 points and let them play for 5 mins

 

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The success rate is not negligible at all, maybe 15-30% when down by 4 in the last minute, 5-15% when down by 5-6. Of course this depends greatly on the offensive skill of the team, and the ability to make quick plays.

 

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