Quote:
Originally Posted by A Pennsylvania Coach
Exception, not the rule.
The "ball instead of FTs" doesn't work either; it just incentivizes the defense to take bigger and bigger risks in hopes of a steal, with no downside. And eventually the officials tired of playing 2 seconds at a time will let something go that should be called, et cetera.
The problem with the steep penalty (3 FTs at 13+, or a time runoff) is that when the penalty is steep, some officials may factor that into their judgment of what to call. I'm talking about the same logic that led to the 5-yard face mask penalty. For the grasp and release, 15 yards seemed too punitive, so it would get passed on sometimes. Then for the grasp, slight twist, release, well that's close to the same so don't call that either. The 5-yard option gives officials a way to correct it without being punitive.
The real solution is a shot clock. But for budgetary reasons, that won't be mandated by Fed for quite some time. Until then, late game fouling is a necessary evil.
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First of all, I don't know that this is necessarily a problem looking for a solution, but it is always a worthwhile discussion to have.
Secondly, yes, you could foul every two seconds, but eventually you will probably foul the player that the offensive team would like to send to the line. If the fouls become hard fouls with excessive force or without attempt to play the ball, the official can still call an intentional foul (though, I will agree that officials do hesitate to make this call because of the massive difference in penalty compared to a regular foul -- which could be the difference between 1+1 and 2+THE BALL).
I do not think that calling a foul that happens to be the 13th or 14th for a team resulting in a 3-free-throw penalty would be significantly different than calling the 10th or 11th foul resulting in 2 vs. the 7th for a 1+1 -- a 67% FTer will have an expected value of 1.0 for the 1+1 vs. a 1.34 for 2 FTs. Yes, the 13th foul has an expected value of 2.0 in this situation, but not enough to prevent a call, in my opinion.
This difference is still only about half of the difference of a 1+1 (1.0 for a 67% shooter) vs. an intentional foul which would have 2 shots (1.34 for a 67% shooter) plus another 1.2 for the extra possession yielding 1.0 vs. 2.54. This math is one reason why referees are very reluctant to call all-but-the-most-obvious intentional fouls near the end of a game.
As for the answer being the shot clock, doesn't this still happen in college? Don't they have a shot clock, already?