Quote:
fouling is an accepted strategy
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I'm asking you and the committee: what other rules infractions are acceptable and how is their acceptance shown?
If fouling is the only acceptable infraction, why is it penalized at all? I thought the idea of a penalty was deterrence.
Step back from everything you know about basketball and think about this. What other rule set do you know of that explicitly says committing a specific rules infraction is "acceptable?"
The other problem is that the game has changed drastically from the time when fouling to stop the clock started. Not only is the game much more physical, we have a three point line where the team that fouls can in theory trade 3 points for 2, and the other team has no ability to change that. Thus you have a clear advantage gained by a team intentionally committing a rules infraction. How exactly is that any different than cheating?
Finally, this allowance is ruining the game. Its terrible that games are taking 20 minutes to finish the last 2-3 clock minutes. When I played, you might foul in the last 30-45 seconds if you were down by 3 or less. Now, teams start fouling down 15 with 3 minutes left. There's nothing you can say that would make me believe that this makes the game better.