There is a reason many people say they can watch the last two minutes off an NBA basketball game and get a full experience. The end of NBA Games can be exhausting, full of intentional fouls and rule manipulation. The NBA is searching for fixes, and is looking at one tournament in particular.
The Basketball Tournament, a $2 million pickup-style game, experimented with different end-game rules that have lead to interesting results. They instituted a rule that eliminates the shot clock after the first time stoppage under the three-minute mark. Then, the officials would decide a target score, determined by adding seven points to the score of the leading team. The first team to reach that score is declared the winner. This has been dubbed the “Elam Ending”, named after the inventor of the idea.
While it sounds dramatic, NBA officials are reportedly interested in the idea and how it plays out. “You know what?” Kiki Vandeweghe, the NBA’s executive vice president of basketball operations, said to ESPN. “That is really interesting. Honestly, that is a really creative idea.”
“We will definitely watch it,” Vandeweghe continued. “We’ll look at all of the data and see what comes out of it.”
While it is interesting, the idea appears too radical, still to be implemented even in NBA Summer League. “[The Elam Ending] is in a bucket of things that are interesting and innovative but not near the top of our list in terms of testing in the G League or summer league,” Evan Wasch, G League Vice President of Basektball Strategy and Analytics says.
While the idea has garnered interest from NBA officials, it is clearly still in an infancy stage. If the idea is too radical for even the Summer League, there is a ways to go still for the Elam Ending.
