FIBA - Shift to standardized rules gets a bounce
This, quite possibly, is basketball's future: College players launching three-pointers behind an NBA-depth line. Olympic teams running longer, U.S.-regulation courts. Everybody — college, pro and international — using the overseas game's more liberal, swat-it-off-the-rim goaltending rule. As basketball's global popularity grows, so does sentiment to standardize its rules. NCAA, NBA and international officials are talking, and the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) already has approved a series of shifts toward the American game in 2010, backing up its three-point line a little more than 1½ feet and going from its distinctive trapezoid to a rectangular lane.
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This, quite possibly, is basketball's future:
College players launching three-pointers behind an NBA-depth line. Olympic teams running longer, U.S.-regulation courts. Everybody — college, pro and international — using the overseas game's more liberal, swat-it-off-the-rim goaltending rule.
As basketball's global popularity grows, so does sentiment to standardize its rules. NCAA, NBA and international officials are talking, and the International Basketball Federation (FIBA) already has approved a series of shifts toward the American game in 2010, backing up its three-point line a little more than 1½ feet and going from its distinctive trapezoid to a rectangular lane.
"I think in the next decade," NBA executive Stu Jackson says, "you'll see the rules get to a point where you could argue they're standardized."
In many cases, they might be headed toward current NBA standards.
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Jackson, the league's executive vice president of basketball operations, makes it clear the pros aren't interested in shortening their 23-foot, 9-inch three-point line (which tapers to 22 feet in the corners). The deeper international arc will go into effect with other changes after the 2010 world championships, and the NCAA is moving back a foot — from 19-9 to 20-9 — next season.
"Our players are going out now past the international line," says Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, an assistant on the U.S. team in Beijing. "I don't see that (eventually going to 23-9) being a problem."
He's less sold, he says, on going from the colleges' 35-second shot clock to the NBA's 24. But Jackson says, "We've seen one example, in the WNBA, where they've gone from a longer clock to the 24-second clock fairly seamlessly. Having seen it work there, the likelihood of it working in the NCAA and maintaining the quality of the game — getting quality shots and quality plays — I think is good."
Officials including NBA deputy commissioner Adam Silver, NCAA senior vice president Greg Shaheen and FIBA secretary general Patrick Baumann have talked informally about standardization. Efforts are expected to pick up after the Olympics.
"Everybody has their own constituencies they answer to," Jackson says. "While we all may be able to agree that we want to do something, actually implementing it will take time. But the spirit's there."
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