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Originally Posted by Mark Padgett
Then why stop there? How about making any basket in the last two minutes by the team that is trailing worth the number of points by which they are trailing? That would be really exciting.
OK - I'm just trying to make the point that the "purity" of the amateur game (or what's left of it) shouldn't be sacrificed just to make the game "more exciting". A team has the entire game to score more points than the other team. They shouldn't get any "artificial" help at the end.
To me, having rules like this is similar to officials calling games different at the end.
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But in some ways I think it's a bogus point. Since the day Dr. Naismith scribbled his 13 rules on a bit of parchment and headed to the gym to see if it would actually work, the game has changed continually. It has had to, for several reasons. And while I have some sympathy for your idealism about amatuer athletics, one reason for the evolution of the game is purely interest and excitement. If the game does not continue to be interesting and exciting, nobody will want to play it.
I'm not saying I want this rule in HS basketball. But I don't believe that making a conscious decision to alter the rules to make the game more exciting somehow robs the game of its purity. After all, the game was invented for that exact reason, to give an unruly PE class something more interesting to do in the gym during the winter than ... whatever it was they were doing previously.