An old favorite post of mine: Basketball Sucks. It’s among the most popular all time posts on my humble little blog.
I wrote:
…for reasons I completely fail to understand (and have no hopes of ever grasping), sometimes when you call a timeout, your team gets to pass the ball inbounds from halfway up the court. So if the other team sinks what should be a game-winning shot, you’re allowed to set your team up within reasonable range of the basket to make what should be an impossible shot – simply because you’ve called timeout. There’s no way this rule can be founded in our common understanding of logic.
Recently (just over two years later!), Chuck Klosterman made the very same observation in a feature piece on Grantland.
Says Chuck:
I’m obsessed with the fact that — following a timeout, late in any game — teams can automatically move the ball to half court…There’s nothing else like it — it’s the only statute that suggests time and space don’t matter. A team calls a timeout 94 feet from the basket, and it suddenly gets the ball 47 feet from the goal. It would be like the rules committee in baseball deciding that any runner on first base can automatically advance to second if there are two outs in the ninth inning, or like if the NFL decreed that touchbacks inside the two-minute warning instantly moved the pigskin to the 50.
I love it when I’m right.
dear josh- another reason why basketball sucks (the extreme stoppage in game play following the moment timeouts are called or fouls are committed). i rail against the time delays in baseball between pitches, but basketball has some severe inefficiencies in the flow of games. let’s say 25 fouls are committed per team. even if each foul takes 45 seconds to process, that’s still about an extra 18-20 minutes a game. for a 48 minute game that’s WAY too long.
That’s a really good point. It’s a shame that baseball is the only sport that gets a bad rap for time stoppages.
Soccer is miles ahead in this department.
Also-hey Josh, I miss you.