Analyst for American television, Jeff Van Gundy will comment on his 17th final, alongside Mike Breen and Mark Jackson. The former Knicks coach is paid to give his opinion, and that’s good, because he has opinions…
In the war for attention waged by the various forms of entertainment, the leaders of sports leagues are looking for ways to reduce the duration of matches, or at least to break the rhythm to a minimum. MLB has just put in place a set of rules to speed up the tempo of its matches.
Can the NBA do the same? If so, Jeff Van Gundy has a pretty drastic idea!
“My most radical idea is to eliminate free throws until the last four minutes”explains Jeff Van Gundy at The Athletic. “If there’s a foul on a shot, you just get the points. You don’t go on the line. And you don’t go over the line for technical fouls. You just get the points. »
“The only person who likes free throws is the commentator, because he takes the opportunity to tell stories with poetry. This is the NBA’s bonus point. It has no rational or reasonable purpose”
Another idea, a little less radical: limit half-time as much as possible…
“Then I would eliminate half-time. I think halftime is the biggest waste of time. Or else I’ll cut it down to five minutes so we can go to the bathroom and come back. The idea of what happens at half-time is very misunderstood. It is often a matter of congratulating or correcting what has just happened. But we can do that in two minutes on the bench, during an extended timeout. »
Halftime (like free throws for that matter) still allows players to breathe and recover some of their efforts. The virtual elimination of free throws would also change a lot of things, this aspect of the game becoming useless, except for players who compete for money-time, if Jeff Van Gundy’s proposal were applied. But for the ESPN / ABC commentator, these sequences on the line do not interest anyone.
“So free throws would be my first choice, until the last four minutes. I don’t think you should take away free throws in the last four minutes of a game. But let’s speed things up. The only person who likes free throws is the commentator, because he takes the opportunity to tell stories with poetry. This is the NBA’s bonus point. It has no rational or reasonable purpose”.
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