The Thunder-Wolves thriller is diverted by a free parade, again showing why the NBA must put itself seriously about a solution

The last 10 seconds of a large Nba basketball match, this time the Oklahoma City Thunder 128-126 Victory on Minnesota Timberwolves To take a final advance of the Western Conference 3-1 on Monday, were ruined by an overly familiar and more and more ridiculous rule problem that the league refuses to repair.

You are not going to find anything new in the description of the following sequence, which reduced the last exciting minutes of a game of finals of the NBA conference at 10 seconds of drying of painting. You have seen this exact scenario take place hundreds of times if you follow the NBA. The team has won three points in the last seconds, so it’s that team B, intentionallyTo prevent it from trying a potential 3 point pointer.

In this case, the Thunder was team A. They increased by 126-123 after Shai Gilgeous-Alexander missed a frank throw with 7.1 seconds to play. This should have been the most exciting part of an extremely exciting game. Everyone, fans of the arena to all those who watch on television around the world, should have been on the edge of their seats. Except that we all knew what was going to happen. An intentional fault. That Lu sleeps committed on the initial inbound pass, then again a tenth of a second later to send Naz Reid at the line of free throws.

Reid makes both. Minnesota is broken. They go. As intentionally. More free throws. SGA does both, and we are back where we started, with Minnesota down three, only the clock is six seconds. Wolves are out of the dead time, so they have to take the ball over the entire length of the terrain. Alex Caruso allowed Anthony Edwards To take some dribbles on the ground to kill three seconds, then faults. Intentionally. There is no doubt about it. It is literally recorded as a “fault” in the Play-by-Play flow.

It is here that I will remind you that the NBA rightly changed its rules book to punish the “transition of the transition” which intentionally committed to stopping a quick break. For what? Because the rapid breaks are exciting and the faults are not supposed to help the incriminated team. There is no difference with these sockets at the top by three, which eliminates the possibility of an equal shot and, by extension, help The incriminated team.

Minnesota does not want two free throws here. He needs three points. In football, you can reduce penalties, and maybe the same option should be available in basketball. Imagine a six -point football team, in defense, being just authorized to commit a penalty that forces the team to kick a basket instead of trying a game throwing in the goals?

It wouldn’t happen. In football, if you commit a penalty, You are punished. All he does is to bring the offensive team to the goal area even more closer. You cannot remove their opportunity to play outfit, regardless of the number of ways to handle the rules. Same thing in baseball. If you have an advance in a race with two withdrawals in the ninth round, you cannot remove the last match of the match. Are you walking the guy by the plate? You must launch to the next guy. You walk enough guys and the Run-Run scores. You cannot help yourself by doing something that is, by rule, designed to hurt yourself.

Why can’t basketball understand this? There are a myriad of ways to tackle it. Once again, these are obvious faults, which are already in the rules of rules and are punished by granting two free throws more possession to the team which is at fault. Highlight the three faults in the same way, and you will never see them again. They will be gone, POOF, like that, and in 10 years, each fan of the world will only ask what the devil has taken the NBA so long to do it.

Or, as suggested above, give the team that can reduce the penalty. Returning the original time on the clock, remove the ball from the limits and two take a row faults is a technique. Two shots more the ball. Again, this crisis would be during the next day. More than three faults increasing by sucking the life of what should be the most exciting moment of the game.

Or what about this? If the team which takes place three faults outside the line of 3 points, whether on the shot or not, these are three free throws. The league is currently punishing intentional faults on bad frank launch shooters in the last two minutes. Why would it be different? It is literally the same logic. The League decided that you should not be authorized to send a player to the free throw line if it does not benefit this player, and by extension his team, to be there. It is the spirit of free throws. They are supposed to be awards.

When you are down three years, you are not rewarded with two free throws. You are punished. And the fans, the same goes for Monday, he was deprived of a potential stroke in the name of watching Edwards walk towards the free throw line, where he made the first and missed the second express before the end of the match on a desperate uprising of the limits which was struck in the most anticlimactic way possible.

Fascinating things.

This cannot be overestimated: these qualifying matches are the renowned marketing opportunities for a league which, according to some, will tell you in popularity, or at least must fight more and more for the eye globes of modern fans with endless entertainment options. And just when the tension should be set to explode, the game ends with an express fouling team and the other missing team?

It is like the guy of the park who continues to pick up his dribbling and firm the panel shots so that he can get his own rebound. It’s a gadget. And he has no place in an NBA match, not to mention an eliminatory match.

Now let’s talk about hypocrisy in play here. The lost team is Also Internally raised to extend the game. The Wolves did it on Monday, as each basketball escape team does it in the last seconds. This is why Gilgeous-Alexander was on the free throw line in the first place. If thunder will be punished to have an intentionally fault, why shouldn’t it be the same for the Wolves?

This is a just question, and it turns out that it has an obvious answer. It’s called the end Elam. The NBA tried it in a few star matches. If you are not familiar with the end of Elam, this happens like this: four minutes from the fourth quarter, the clock is disabled and the teams play with a target score – generally eight points on the number of the team that is ahead.

In the match on Monday, the Thunder increased by 113-109 with four minutes to play. You turn off the clock and play 121. This completely removes the fouling of the equation, because all points that your opponent brand is only pushing them closer to the winning number.

If you lose, you cannot be mistaken on purpose. You don’t even need it. You don’t play against the clock. You only play to prevent the other team from scoring. Same thing if you win. You have no incitement to allow free throws. You just play the defense at one end and try to score from the other. In other words, you play basketball.

What happened at the end of the Thunder-Wolves match on Monday, and what we watched to play at the end of the matches almost because it was played in fishing baskets is not basketball. It’s a gadget. And it’s time to stop.

There are many easily implementable applications to get there. If the end Elam is too radical for you, very well. Establish one of the options I listed above. Or do something else. Something else. Just go up in a room and discover it. Because I assure you, nobody wants to look at this. Free throws are like ads for streaming services. You look at them because you have to do it, and you jump them at the moment when it becomes an option. Take note, nba. Before your audience, even if only a small subset, starts jumping to you.