These things in the NBA do not make sense

The shot clock is one of the best rules in the NBA and should be instituted at almost every level of basketball as it eliminates a lot of other stupid rules. Anyway, the below list is comprised of things that do not make sense to me in the NBA. I am sure they were grounded in some kind of logic (faulty, no doubt).

Backcourt violation – Who gives a rip if a team went all the way back to the opposite end of the court? Which, may I remind you, is the opponents end of the court? Who? This rule doesn’t make sense. What advantage does an offense have to go back on to the other side of the court? I guess it allows LeBron to get a head of full steam to jump from the free throw line…Are we suddenly going to see players launch from the OTHER SIDE OF THE COURT? Dame is licking his chops. When was that ever happening? Again, shot clock.
Eight seconds – Who cares how long it takes for a team to get it across half-court? You have a shot clock. Go ahead, eat up the shot clock. WHO ARE THESE pEoPlE?
What a player wears to the arena – Has nothing to do with on-court performance, yet people love talking about it. Sports radio loves it. I hate it. Stop talking about it.
Jump balls – Just use a coin like ever other classy sport. Football, Soccer, Tennis, etc. They all do a coin toss to determine who gets the ball first, but basketball has to be different and do a toss? Ok. Real cool, guys. Real cool. Ran out of coins that day you came up with the rule? Use a coin! Imagine that thing hitting the hard wood. It would sound cool.
Not having a chip in the ball – Your scientists never asked “Why not?” – they just didn’t.
Not allowing teammates to help other teammates that cannot dunk to be able to dunk by using another teammate’s body or hoisting them to the rim – Duh.
How narrow the court is – Maybe too late now that all of this infrastructure is built, but they should widen the court. The short three shouldn’t be short and you need more room out there. Allow more room. Who was like, “nah, we gotta keep the court all the same” after they created the three point line. Doesn’t have to be. So arbitrary. It feels like someone just made up all these rules and we slowly change them over time to our suiting. This is one that should be looked at.
How assists are given – It is very, very subjective. Sketchy. Doesn’t make sense.
The obsession with (+/-) – It really isn’t that great of a metric. I don’t get the obsession over it. It shouldn’t be compared against players from other teams. This is a metric which can help suss out what lineups work and which don’t, but the ever constant change in lineups and opponents don’t allow this to be that helpful.
Calling it a dunk when the player didn’t dunk the ball – Yes, I am jealous. But if you don’t touch the rim – AND YES THAT IS THE KEY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A THROW IN TO A DUNK — TOUCHING THE FRIGGING RIM – when putting the ball down into the hoop it is not a dunk. So, Blake Griffin’s “HUGE Dunk All Over Tim Mozgov” is not a dunk. He absolutely threw the ball into the hoop so hard that we were all like,”OH MY!” But he never touched the rim with his hand. Is the downward motion of throwing a ball into the rim a dunk? Hell nah man. Check out the below video. You can see a clear difference between a really aggressive throw in and a DUNK.
- Blake Griffin is a master of the throw in. Check out this video of his Top 28 Career Dunks… It is over 5 minutes and guess how many are throw ins? Six of them (#26, 17, 15, 14, 9, 2 [Mozgov]) which is over 20% of the list. Get this, the #1 dunk is almost a throw in, but he touches rim. Good, gold, awesome dunk!
- Look, you can use verbs like “threw” or……. or……. what else can you really say? yeah, he threw the ball down. I agree. It is not a slam dunk.
- Now, Blake is an amazing athlete and dunker, but these aren’t dunks
- No, I have never ever dunked on a 10′ rim