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On Saturday, the Final Four will be played. And on Monday, the championship game will be played. What are we talking about? College basketball, the NCAA Tournament, March Madness. Jay’s guest is his young National Review colleague Theodore Kupfer (“Teddy K.”), who is a philosophy grad, steeped in sports. Jay and Teddy talk about the current tournament and also about larger issues: How corrupt is college basketball? Should athletes be paid? Are announcers any good? Can something be done about the often-interminable last few minutes of a game?
Enjoy the analysis of a whiz kid, Theodore Kupfer.
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When you play a pick-up game in the alley it does not have the end of game blues that college basketball has. So modify college basketball:
*With 4 min left in the second half, stop the game.
*Take the leader’s score and add 10%. i.e. if the leader has 65 points add 7 points = 72.
*Both teams now play to 72, with NO clock.
That has the same problem the guest noted: different rules at the end of the game that what pertained for the rest of the game.
How about this: On any personal foul, the fouled player gets one free throw. One a miss it’s a free ball. On a make his team gets the ball back and a new shot clock.
Then even with a player like Shaq who makes 50% of his free throws, hacking makes little sense: on average your team only get the ball back about a quarter of the time (half are makes, and assume the rebounds are evenly split).
The only difference between the end of the game and the rest of the game is the time factor. It would be known from the beginning that this is not exactly a timed game. The clock is used to give a nominal length of the game but avoid the distortion of the clock winding to zero. A game played with no clock at the end would be one with normal defense and offense until the final shot that ends the game.