BleedGopher
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per Yahoo Sports:
When the fifth edition of The Basketball Tournament tipped off last month, more was at stake than just which team would claim the event’s winner-take-all $2 million prize.
Also hanging in the balance was the fate of a former middle-school principal’s radical attempt to revolutionize the sport of basketball.
Nick Elam, now a Ball State professor, Mensa member and Cincinnati Reds groundskeeper, has long watched with annoyance as entertaining basketball games deteriorated down the stretch into disjointed, foul-laden whistle fests. He studied the most frequently discussed remedies — stiffer penalties for intentional fouls or allowing hacked teams to pick their free-throw shooter — but none offered trailing teams a reasonable alternative to fouling.
A far more unorthodox potential solution eventually dawned on Elam in March 2007 as he watched the foul-plagued final minutes of a college game: eliminating the game clock during crunch time. If the clock was no longer a factor, Elam reasoned, teams would have no incentive to ugly up the game by stalling to protect a late lead or purposely fouling to preserve hope of a comeback.
“If we had emojis back then, I’d have used the head-exploding one to express how I felt,” Elam said. “That was the first time I thought of the idea, and I was immediately energized. I tried not to get too excited because I figured there must be some kind of fatal flaw to it, but I decided I was going to stick with the idea until I figured out what that fatal flaw was.”
Under Elam’s proposal, the game clock disappears at the first stoppage in the last four minutes of a college game and the last three minutes of an NBA game. Officials then establish a target score by taking the score of the team that leads and adding seven points. The game ends whenever one team reaches that number, ensuring that every contest concludes with the winning team sinking a clinching basket or foul shot.
Eager to circulate his idea but lacking any meaningful connections within the basketball world, Elam instead resorted to cold pitching coaches, administrators or media members whose mailing addresses or emails he could track down. Among the luminaries whom Elam sent a copy of his initial manuscript were CBS play-by-play voice Jim Nantz and former NBA commissioner David Stern.
When no one lined up to champion the proposal of a man who last played competitive basketball in fifth grade, Elam lowered his sights and reached out to lower-division college coaches, organizers of semi-pro tournaments and representatives of far-flung international leagues. Those who responded typically applauded Elam’s dedication but declined to actually experiment with his unconventional idea.
Everything changed on Aug. 6, 2016, when Elam sent a detailed 67-slide PowerPoint presentation to a man bold enough to consider an offbeat proposal. TBT founder and CEO Jon Mugar opened the email with skepticism but came away impressed by Elam’s meticulousness, innovation and vision.
“I was a Division III basketball walk-on. I can recite ‘Hoosiers’ backwards and forwards. I can’t think of a bigger basketball purist than me so I wanted to be dismissive of a radical change like that,” Mugar said. “If one word weren’t punctuated or spelled correctly, I probably would have deleted the email, but everything was so perfectly worded and it was so clear there was a ton of thought and consideration put into it. So, while skeptical, I kept reading. Then I talked to Nick 10 times on the phone, did more background research on him and decided it was worth giving him a shot.”
Mugar dubbed the new method of finishing games as the “Elam Ending,” dabbled with it in some play-in games last year and then agreed to adopt it for every TBT game this summer, by far Elam’s biggest victory since he conceived of the idea more than a decade ago. This was Elam’s chance to assess if his scheme actually worked, to use ESPN’s platform to reach a wider audience and perhaps even to capture the imagination of the NBA and college basketball heavy hitters who at last were paying attention.
NBA, college basketball keeping an eye on Elam Ending
For the NBA and college basketball, TBT implementing the Elam Ending was an ideal scenario. It gave them the chance to compile the data necessary to analyze the pros and cons of Elam’s brainchild without actually having to risk experimenting with such an unproven, unconventional concept themselves.
Kiki Vandeweghe, the NBA’s executive vice president of basketball operations, was curious enough about Elam’s idea to have a 30-minute phone conversation with him about it last year. When TBT announced it was going all-in on the Elam Ending this summer, Vandeweghe and NBA senior vice president of basketball strategy and analytics Evan Wasch carved out time to watch as many games as possible and study the results.
“We believe that our game is in a great place, but having said that, we’re also charged with always being aware of what’s going on in the sport,” Vandeweghe said. “We’ve watched this some, we’re familiar with the concept and we think it’s really intriguing. Overall right now, for a variety of reasons, it might be a little radical for us to try out, but we’re tracking the games in which it’s being used and we’re watching the results very closely.”
Properly assessing the Elam Ending has not been easy so far this summer because so many early-round TBT games have been blowouts. Less than one third of the 56 games played so far have been decided by single digits, but the few that were in doubt when the Elam Ending kicked in have typically featured enthusiastic crowds, fewer deliberate fouls and dramatic finishes.
https://sports.yahoo.com/radical-ne...a-college-basketball-intrigued-143141174.html
Go Gophers!!
When the fifth edition of The Basketball Tournament tipped off last month, more was at stake than just which team would claim the event’s winner-take-all $2 million prize.
Also hanging in the balance was the fate of a former middle-school principal’s radical attempt to revolutionize the sport of basketball.
Nick Elam, now a Ball State professor, Mensa member and Cincinnati Reds groundskeeper, has long watched with annoyance as entertaining basketball games deteriorated down the stretch into disjointed, foul-laden whistle fests. He studied the most frequently discussed remedies — stiffer penalties for intentional fouls or allowing hacked teams to pick their free-throw shooter — but none offered trailing teams a reasonable alternative to fouling.
A far more unorthodox potential solution eventually dawned on Elam in March 2007 as he watched the foul-plagued final minutes of a college game: eliminating the game clock during crunch time. If the clock was no longer a factor, Elam reasoned, teams would have no incentive to ugly up the game by stalling to protect a late lead or purposely fouling to preserve hope of a comeback.
“If we had emojis back then, I’d have used the head-exploding one to express how I felt,” Elam said. “That was the first time I thought of the idea, and I was immediately energized. I tried not to get too excited because I figured there must be some kind of fatal flaw to it, but I decided I was going to stick with the idea until I figured out what that fatal flaw was.”
Under Elam’s proposal, the game clock disappears at the first stoppage in the last four minutes of a college game and the last three minutes of an NBA game. Officials then establish a target score by taking the score of the team that leads and adding seven points. The game ends whenever one team reaches that number, ensuring that every contest concludes with the winning team sinking a clinching basket or foul shot.
Eager to circulate his idea but lacking any meaningful connections within the basketball world, Elam instead resorted to cold pitching coaches, administrators or media members whose mailing addresses or emails he could track down. Among the luminaries whom Elam sent a copy of his initial manuscript were CBS play-by-play voice Jim Nantz and former NBA commissioner David Stern.
When no one lined up to champion the proposal of a man who last played competitive basketball in fifth grade, Elam lowered his sights and reached out to lower-division college coaches, organizers of semi-pro tournaments and representatives of far-flung international leagues. Those who responded typically applauded Elam’s dedication but declined to actually experiment with his unconventional idea.
Everything changed on Aug. 6, 2016, when Elam sent a detailed 67-slide PowerPoint presentation to a man bold enough to consider an offbeat proposal. TBT founder and CEO Jon Mugar opened the email with skepticism but came away impressed by Elam’s meticulousness, innovation and vision.
“I was a Division III basketball walk-on. I can recite ‘Hoosiers’ backwards and forwards. I can’t think of a bigger basketball purist than me so I wanted to be dismissive of a radical change like that,” Mugar said. “If one word weren’t punctuated or spelled correctly, I probably would have deleted the email, but everything was so perfectly worded and it was so clear there was a ton of thought and consideration put into it. So, while skeptical, I kept reading. Then I talked to Nick 10 times on the phone, did more background research on him and decided it was worth giving him a shot.”
Mugar dubbed the new method of finishing games as the “Elam Ending,” dabbled with it in some play-in games last year and then agreed to adopt it for every TBT game this summer, by far Elam’s biggest victory since he conceived of the idea more than a decade ago. This was Elam’s chance to assess if his scheme actually worked, to use ESPN’s platform to reach a wider audience and perhaps even to capture the imagination of the NBA and college basketball heavy hitters who at last were paying attention.
NBA, college basketball keeping an eye on Elam Ending
For the NBA and college basketball, TBT implementing the Elam Ending was an ideal scenario. It gave them the chance to compile the data necessary to analyze the pros and cons of Elam’s brainchild without actually having to risk experimenting with such an unproven, unconventional concept themselves.
Kiki Vandeweghe, the NBA’s executive vice president of basketball operations, was curious enough about Elam’s idea to have a 30-minute phone conversation with him about it last year. When TBT announced it was going all-in on the Elam Ending this summer, Vandeweghe and NBA senior vice president of basketball strategy and analytics Evan Wasch carved out time to watch as many games as possible and study the results.
“We believe that our game is in a great place, but having said that, we’re also charged with always being aware of what’s going on in the sport,” Vandeweghe said. “We’ve watched this some, we’re familiar with the concept and we think it’s really intriguing. Overall right now, for a variety of reasons, it might be a little radical for us to try out, but we’re tracking the games in which it’s being used and we’re watching the results very closely.”
Properly assessing the Elam Ending has not been easy so far this summer because so many early-round TBT games have been blowouts. Less than one third of the 56 games played so far have been decided by single digits, but the few that were in doubt when the Elam Ending kicked in have typically featured enthusiastic crowds, fewer deliberate fouls and dramatic finishes.
https://sports.yahoo.com/radical-ne...a-college-basketball-intrigued-143141174.html
Go Gophers!!