NBA could benefit from tweaking some rules
Borrowing a few ideas could make game more exciting
Less than a week before the regular season opens — it’ll be busy around Cleveland with the Cavaliers opening at almost exactly the same time as Game1 of the World Series unfolds next door — and the overriding sense is optimistic. Especially on the larger scale. Talks resumed this week with the players’ association on a new collective bargaining agreement, talks important enough that union president Chris Paul flew across the continent after a pre-season game to take part.
The league’s board of governors is meeting this week in New York as well and things are dovetailing towards an early resolution to collective bargaining.
So with some time on their hands, the governors might want to instruct the competition committee to investigate some alterations to the game.
Keep the game moving: In international play, the shot clock is reset after an offensive rebound to 14 seconds and not 24 as it is in the NBA. It obviously quickens play and gets more offence into the game and that can’t be bad.
Keep the rim in play: Stealing another idea from FIBA, the league should look at allowing rebounders — offensive and defensive— to take the ball off the rim. It would take some getting used to and is counterintuitive to everything North American players are taught but it does add some excitement. Find more time: Having watched another pre-season when nearly ev- ery team “rested” significant players for games, the governors need to look at shortening the training camp/preseason period by two weeks and use one of those weeks to extend the regular season and cut down even further on back-to-back games.
SECOND CHANCE: Mississauga’s Andrew Nicholson is turning some heads with his pre-season work with the Washington Wizards.
He had 19 points for the Wizards against Cleveland earlier this week and has given Washington a bona fide low-post scorer to go along with the backcourt of John Wall and Bradley Beal.
Coach Scott Brooks is impressed with the former Orlando Magic big man.
“He’s a solid basketball player,” Brooks told reporters. “He’s very fundamentally sound. He’s not going to make a lot of mistakes. He’s very organized in his thinking on the court, which is good. We like that.”
CUBS HATER: Frank Kaminsky really, really, really doesn’t like the Chicago Cubs and seems to have fun letting everyone know that.
The Charlotte Hornets forward, a native Chicagoan who says his two favourite baseball teams are “the White Sox and whoever is playing the Cubs,” showed up a game against the Bulls this week wearing a No. 44 “Bartman” jersey.
Bartman, of course, is the fan who famously interfered with a foul ball in Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS that helped ignite a Florida Marlins rally that eventually led to Chicago missing out on a shot at the World Series.
RETURN OF POPS: One of the alltime fan favourite Raptors — and we’re still not sure how that came to happen — is back working in the NBA.
Pops Mensah-Bonsu, whose Toronto career spanned 35 games and 370 minutes over two seasons, was hired this week as the advanced pro scout for the East Coast region by the San Antonio Spurs.
Mensah-Bonsu’s career effectively ended in June 2015, when he was banned for two years after testing positive for amphetamines, which he claims he took in a prescribed medicine.
NO, CANADA: Bit of excitement in the Pacific Northwest earlier this week when an Internet report suggested the NBA might think about expansion once it gets a new CBA done with the players association.
Wishful thinking at best. Utter fabrication at worst.
According to a handful of NBA sources, the league has no plans to even think about adding teams; there is absolutely no traction to discuss expansion, let alone move along the process.
TENNIS TAKES BACK SEAT: Wonder how hard he’ll try?
Tennis bad-boy Nick Kyrgios, banned two months from playing in the ATP after tanking a match and mocking fans last week, has bailed out of a Netherlands tournament next February so he can supposedly play in the celebrity game at the NBA all-star weekend in New Orleans.
Officials of the tennis tournament honoured his request to get out of a contract to play; the NBA is months away from announcing its celebrity game lineups.
BACK IN THE FOLD: Cleared of all charges in a civil sexual assault charges, Derrick Rose is back with the New York Knicks with scant time to get ready for the regular season.
Absolved by a jury Wednesday, Rose will have three practices with his new team before the Knicks open the regular season Tuesday in Cleveland. He’s missed the last two weeks of practice and pre-season games while attending the trial.
“Oh man, that’s great news where Derrick can just kind of put that behind him, focus on the task at hand and get back in the flow of things,” Carmelo Anthony told reporters. “From that standpoint we’re kind of excited about that just to have him back in the fold.”