NBA can win their Spurs and boost TV ratings by aiming a bit higher

FAN NEWS (By Greg Varkonyi, Sportingo) - The NBA Finals drew the lowest national TV ratings, but an experimental exhibition game raised the rim from 10 to 11 feet. Is this the way forward?

'Raising the height of the rim has been an issue in the past few years. It seems like a natural step to coincide with the highly increased athletic and physical ability of today’s players'
San Antonio Spurs won the NBA Championship once again by focusing on the fundamentals of the game. These Spurs are known to play the game the way it was intended.

The words "extravagant", "fade-away", "behind-the-back", "no-look", "360-degree dunk" "alley-oop" are seldom at use when they take the court. While some of their players definitely have all the prerequisites to be flashy, coach Greg Poppovich teaches them how to win and not how to please the crowd. To top it all off they have found the perfect superstar for this system, the big fundamental himself: Tim Duncan.

These Spurs have won their fourth title in nine years, and they have garnered lower TV ratings with each and every win. Why? I honestly do not know. I am a basketball fan all the way, and I love to see a team embrace the fundamentals of the game and use it effectively. Yet I find these Spurs too boring to watch. I cannot really explain why, after all they do play an attractive blend of basketball.

It might be Duncan’s lack of emotions, Ginobili’s constant flopping, or Bruce Bowen’s borderline dangerous defense. Whatever it is, the Spurs are simply not fun to watch for non-fans of the team. Believe me, I did some deep soul searching and have come to the conclusion that I definitely do not hate this Spurs team, I’m just unable to watch their games. According to the TV ratings of the Western Conference finals and the finals I am definitely not alone with this feeling. The Spurs simply do not garner enough interest.

With all of this in mind it is still unbelievable that this season has produced the lowest ratings for an NBA final. Especially if you remember that the Spurs-Suns series was one of the most watched play-off series of this decade. Of course, the Suns have been TV darlings ever since Steve Nash and coach Mike D’Antoni teamed up to reinvent up-tempo basketball. Still a match-up of the highly marketable LeBron James and his Cavs going up against Tim Duncan and team bland should have not been such a disaster with TV ratings.

The reason I’m highlighting this is because last week saw the first ever official basketball game (an exhibition) with rims at 11ft instead of 10ft high. Raising the height of the rim has been an issue in the past few years. It seems like a natural step to coincide with the highly increased athletic and physical ability of today’s players. It is believed that this change would force players to play the way basketball was meant to be played.

A taller rim allows for fewer isolation, one-on-one plays. With the rim higher only a select few would be able to play above the rim, just like the way it was up until the late 1980s, when a slew of athletic players were being picked up in the hopes of landing the next Michael Jordan or Dominique Wilkins.

The exhibition game’s first half was awkward as players were still making the type of slashes to the rim, and drop step moves that made for easy points with a 10ft rim. They quickly found out however, that with the taller rim, these moves create awkward shooting angles from where it is nigh on impossible to score. Outside shooters also saw their fade-away jump shots falling short most of the time.

What did stand out was that both teams relied more heavily on passing, those shooters that set their feet correctly and had a straight-up classic shooting stroke easily got used to the new rims and shot the ball much better than the others. It is also worth noting, that the center play got a bit farther from the rim, to provide for a better shooting angle after any kind of spin move.

The outcome could be either very good or very bad. The NBA saw a boost in the ratings when these super athletes started taking over the NBA. Michael Jordan spearheaded a movement towards a more athletic game. The problem is, Jordan was well schooled in the fundamentals, whilst even some of today’s biggest stars have a lack in this area. Would the NBA be willing to sacrifice a few transitional seasons to initially improve their product? Nobody knows.

It could be a very good situation however, as there certainly are enough high flying artists in the league to still provide unbelievable dunks for highlights, and it could bring back the team concept.

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