Ever wonder why the last "two minutes" of some basketball games can drag on for a half hour, or more? Earlier watching Kentucky finally -- FINALLY -- accept the inevitable and go down to North Carolina was the perfect example.
There's a couple obvious reasons why such nonsense continues to happen, and one maybe not so obvious.
First, each team has 5 time-outs per half. That's a grand total of 20 -- count em -- TWENTY time-outs that can be used during the course of a game -- and often every last one of them is. Throw in the usual assortment of mandatory "commercial breaks", whereby the athletic participants have to bow down to the TV gods, and it comes as no surprise a game that should take roughly two hours sometimes stretches into 3 or more. Horsepuckey.
Second, any hoops fan has no doubt noticed that when a team is behind towards the end of a game, in desperation they will foul the players on the other team, sending them to the free throw line. This is in the hope the free-throw shooter will miss, the trailing team will quickly run down the floor to score 2 or 3 points, and then they'll do it again. And again. In the meantime, while the game clock has wound down maybe 20 seconds, the big hand on your wall clock has made a half orbit. Twenty seconds of game time has just become a half hour of real time. Horsepuckey.
Further, when these situations happen, players that would not normally be on the floor for the trailing team are put out there to commit these fouls, because they have them "to give". Of course, after such fouls are committed, the subs get rotated back off the floor, because, yep, there's yet another break in the action, which enables the coach of the losing team to bring his best players back in. Another time-out is usually called by one coach or the other, we'll see a few more commercials, and the big hand rotates another 45 degrees. Horsepuckey.
Only in basketball does this nonsense happen. Look around. In football, both teams get 3 time-outs per half. Granted, even those are too many, and we've often seen them used for frivolous reasons while the fans are the ones abused. I say cut them down to two time-outs and let's see how that works.
Obviously, baseball has built-in timeouts. At least 17 of them, as the teams rotate on and off the field every half inning. But that's just the nature of the game. Still, they're guilty of stall tactics as well sometimes. Case in point: See a pitching coach head to the mound to "talk" with a pitcher that's being lit up. See the infielders assemble on the mound -- as if they can do a damn thing to stop the other guys from banging the ball all over the park against their pitching teammate. They don't know anything about pitching. Yet they'll all stay huddled up on the mound accomplishing nothing until the home plate umpire walks out and tells them to break it up. We have a game to play here, fellas. Let's go.
And after all of that -- what typically happens next? Here comes the manager to change pitchers. That manager knew damn good and well that pitcher had thrown his last pitch -- so why wasn't he out there in the first place to yank him? A reliever in the bullpen needed time to warm up? Shut up. The guys in the bullpen -- all of them -- should be warmed up and ready to go from the first inning on. What else do they have to do out there? Play cards? Text their girlfriends? These guys are making millions. The least they can do is to be ready to actually, gasp, participate whenever they're called on. More horsepuckey.
Hockey has it right. Each team gets one time-out per game. Period. Many times they won't even use it. Now that's more like it.
But back to where this all started. Basketball, and the way they continue to drag games on and on. There's a couple ways to fix this.
In the last two minutes of a game, when a trailing team is already over the foul limit, and decide to foul anyway out of desperation -- let the other team not only have two uncontested free throws, ala technical foul shots, but retain possession of the ball. The current time-consuming horsepuckey would stop.
And ferchrissakes -- 20 time-outs, on top of the TV time-outs is TOTAL horsepuckey. Who do these guys think they are dragging things on this long while the people that are paying for it all twist in the wind? Congress? And how's their approval rating lately?
Cut them back down to 3 apiece per game and let's see how that works out as well. Six beats the hell out of 20. And maybe a few of the unfortunate souls that continue to actually die while all the current horsepuckey is dragging on -- will get to see the end of the game they tuned into. Whether their team wins or loses -- at least they had some closure before they met their maker. How can that not be a good thing? This purgatory horsepuckey needs to stop.
Oh yeah, almost forgot. The not so obvious thing mentioned above? It's all about the money, of course. More time-outs mean more commercials, which means more cha-chings for a lot of folks. Did I mention the TV gods?
If you're good with that -- fine. Enjoy the ducks, lizards, and washed-up actors hawking everything from insurance to credit cards.
But some of us would much rather see how the game turned out before we die.
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