The Cleveland Cavaliers knocked off Boston Celtics 115-111 on Sunday in a way that should have been, and certainly could have been, exciting. With his Cavs trailing by five with just over three minutes left, Donovan Mitchell went on to make three 3-pointers and 11 points in the next two minutes. But instead of ending the game on that high note, we were treated to the all-too-familiar and, frankly, agonizing conclusion of watching 17 free throws go down in the final 34 seconds – which took nearly half an hour in real time.
It was the latest piece of evidence admitted in the trial against traditional, timed basketball playoffs. Or to put it another way: in the case for the Elam ending, which eliminates the running clock at the four-minute mark of the fourth quarter. From this point on, the game is played to a target score that is seven points higher than the leading team's total score.
For example, if Team A beats Team B 104-100 with four minutes left in the game, the clock stops and the game becomes a race for 111 points.
From an entertainment standpoint, it's a no-brainer. Not only does this guarantee a game-winning shot, but more importantly, it also removes any incentive for the following team to intentionally foul, as more free throws would only provide the winning team with an opportunity to get closer to the final point total.
We saw the Elam end in two All-Star Games and it has been used for years in The Basketball Tournament, created by Jon Mugar. who explained the logic behind the end of Elam to James Herbert of CBS Sports before his NBA induction at the 2020 All-Star Game.
“If [James] Naismith invented the game 130 years ago with the Elam ending, and 130 years later someone came along and tried to introduce the timed ending. It would be like the biggest, most massive failure of all time, with players hitting each other with everything that comes with it at the free throw line. After one game, fans stormed out and said, 'This is the stupidest thing ever,'” Mugar said.
Why the NBA should implement the Elam Ending
Listen, I love to hyperbolize. I'm pretty prone to applying the label “Dumbest Thing Ever” to things that aren't actually the dumbest thing ever. But in this case, the decision to suck the life out of what should be extremely exciting endings to basketball games with a parade of 14 free throws over 15 seconds that end up lasting 20 minutes is, quite literally, the stupidest thing to do at all.
One day the NBA and the world at large will realize that “the way it’s always been done” is no reason to continue doing anything. We used to have cars without seat belts. That was stupid. We put on seat belts. That was smart. Let's also include the Elam ending.
Nevertheless, I am aware that there is a great chance that so-called traditionalists will accept or even implement an idea as seemingly radical as the end of Elam in the foreseeable future. But for now, is it asking too much to legally ban this willful fouling when the end-of-game equation is increased by three nonsense points?
Have we forgotten that this is the case? all about entertainment? Every bit of it. Owners, players, coaches, executives, trainers, shoe companies, television networks and literally anyone who derives financial benefit from the business of NBA basketball does so solely on the basis of entertainment. And there is hardly anything more entertaining than a game-winning three-pointer in the final seconds.
After Payton Pritchard When he hit a deep 3 with 17.2 seconds to play to cut Cleveland's lead to one, the foul play began. Boston fouled Cleveland, which would be eliminated by the Elam final, and after Darius Garland When Cleveland made its two free throws, Cleveland committed its own (intentional) foul, so Boston had no chance to tie the game with a 3-pointer.
And so the parade continued, back and forth, intentional foul after intentional foul, whistle after whistle, until finally, with no time left to manipulate, Pritchard was forced to intentionally miss a free throw. He fired a bullet from the front of the rim, hoping to get a ricochet himself. It almost worked, but he was given a violation because he crossed the line before the ball actually touched the rim.
So the game ended up mercifully ending with a series of gimmicks: intentional fouls and deliberately missed shots in the hopes of manipulating the outcome of a game that should have happened – easily could have ended far more dramatically.
After Garland's two free throws with 14.2 seconds left, the Celtics had three more one-shot possessions to tie the game with a 3, only they never had the chance to actually shoot a 3. They were fouled every time before that could happen. Fans who pay good (and often obscene) money to watch these games were deprived of that crowning glory and instead subjected to a free-throw contest.
How the NBA could easily legislate fouling at the end of the game
It would be so easy to get rid of this garbage. The league has successfully banned calling fouls (when the defense intentionally fouls to prevent fastbreaks) purely for the sake of entertainment, and it was the right thing to do. The league largely did the same thing with the flop, which is now punished relatively consistently, or at least not rewarded.
The next change has to be bringing back the game-winning 3-pointer. We still see them because coaches are wired to fear worst-case scenarios, which in this case would be a four-point game. But anyone who can resist their own paranoia knows that fouling (before the shot, of course) with a three-point lead in the final seconds is almost always the smart move from a competitive perspective.
That's why the league has to make an unwise move. It's not my job to figure out how to do this, but it's actually pretty simple. If you have less than 24 seconds to play in a three-point play, it is three free throws if you commit a foul on the ball outside the 3-point line, whether on the shot or on the floor.
Just like in football, if you foul away from the ball and manage to manipulate the “hack-a-player” rules already in place to prevent it, the attacking team has the right to reject the foul and throw the ball in Getting out instead of making free throws.
Foul twice in a row without possession of the ball and it is a technical foul, i.e. a free throw plus possession of the ball. That's all you need to get teams to stop fouling when there are three of them and give fans the exciting results they deserve with the money they pay.
This is a problem the NBA needs to fix
Basketball is the only sport in which, in these specific and crucial moments of the game, actions that are supposed to be detrimental to a team's goal of winning – like fouls and missed free throws – actually become blessings. In football, when you're down six with one second left, the defense can't deny you the chance to throw another pass into the end zone in hopes of tying the game with a penalty. All that will do is postpone the offense closer to the end zone.
In football, when a penalty is awarded but the referee determines that the offense had an advantage, he signals the foul, but play is allowed to continue to a natural stopping point so as not to penalize offenses that have gained an advantage . More importantly, it doesn't nip an entertaining moment in the bud.
This is, and has long been, a unique and significant basketball issue. It's time to fix the problem. The Elam ending would be a panacea, but until then it's simple: if you're three down with the ball, you have a chance to draw the game.
The NBA needs to ensure that this happens by punishing intentional fouls the same as fouls. The ending to this Boston-Cleveland game was nothing short of disgraceful, and the league should be ashamed of how long it took to even acknowledge the problem, let alone take simple steps to resolve it.
