NBA State of Play – Rule Changes – Trends – CBA – Schedule Reform – Load Mgmt – etc

The NBA's going to survive, even if ratings are down 15%. The owners, players and networks may not make as much off the sport as their greed would like, but if future rookie contracts and max contracts for all-stars have to take a 15% haircut and 'only' 17 million people watch the NBA Finals, then boo-fucking-hoo.

The business end of the sport only interests me in terms of competitive balance within the league. Whether the NBA conquers the world, signs a 40 billion dollar tv contract, and Zion becomes a billionaire or maybe just a half-billionaire is nothing I really care about. That's not hoops. That's just raw capitalism doing its maximum profits thing. Let me find my tiny violin so I can serenade them.

The combination of cable companies dropping RSNs and a moderate loss of China business would be rough

From a fan’s perspective what we should worry about is a dramatic loss of revenue causing a lockout

A lockout would have to wait until the next CBA was being negotiated, but aiui the ultimate basis of player compensation is a fixed percentage of league revenue, not a fixed dollar amount, so a lockout over decreased league revenue would seem to be illogical, unless the position of the owners was that they want a bigger share of the shrinking pie. If so, fuck 'em.

well that is what they would want, and i agree with your stance, but it’s not good news for all of us who enjoy watching basketball.

The position would be that they’ve committed to contracts they can no longer pay

I don't imagine revenues will fall to the extent that the owners would be unable to pay the cost of staying in business without abrogating their player contracts. But if keeping the doors open and the lights on required renegotiation of player contracts, then it would be smart for the player's union to do so, rather than kill the league altogether. A lockout almost certainly would be about the owners extracting terms favorable to themselves, not because the players insist of holding them to "contracts they can no longer pay".

I like this but my twist would be to make *all* shooting fouls worth a single 2-point free throw, including "and ones" on made baskets. Since fouls are more common on 2-pointers than 3-pointers, that would further increase the expected value of 2's relative to 3's. https://t.co/dx2r7q5j5p

— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 20, 2019

Todays column: Get rid of Nate Silver

i actually have to tip my hat to him here for going big

heres the hollinger article

Hollinger: The three-shot foul is a bad rule, badly enforced, with bad side effects— It needs to go

By John Hollinger 5h ago 138
When can we say an NBA rule change failed?

I can think of four potential reasons: When the punishment doesn’t fit the crime, when the officials have difficulty calling it correctly, when it encourages behavior it was originally designed to discourage, or when it takes the game in a worse direction.

In the case of the three-shot foul, we’re a perfect 4-for-4. It’s a bad rule, badly enforced, that encourages bad behavior and stylistic monotony.

The three-shot foul has been around almost as long as the 3-pointer itself. At first, it wasn’t a big deal – three-shot fouls were extremely rare. Two things changed that. First, players slowly realized that the three-shot penalty was a completely outsized response to a minor crime and modified their behavior accordingly – beginning with the exaggerated side leg kicks of Reggie Miller. This move, theoretically outlawed in 2012, remains a popular way of duping refs into a three-shot foul.

Worsening matters, recent points of emphasis from the league have made it illegal to breathe on shooters increased protection for shooters, essentially guaranteeing the shooter no contact from takeoff to landing, no matter how bizarre a path he took en route. That change, in particular, has brought on a barrage of three-shot fouls from shooters jumping forward and adjusting their landing point to collide into a closing defender, or dangling legs at the last minute, hoping to catch a body.

It’s not just James Harden either. Here’s Bryn Forbes, for instance, coming to a nice controlled stop in transition and then suddenly vaulting forward on his shot and jackknifing his legs so they can catch Kevin Huerter.

If you want more examples, believe me, I have them.

My modest proposal is that the league goes back to a two-shot foul penalty for the first 46 minutes of the game. In the last two minutes, when several other minor rules also change, it can keep the three-shot foul to prevent egregious intentional fouling by teams with three-point leads.

Why would this improve the game? Let’s go through the weaknesses, one by one.

Penalty doesn’t fit the crime
This is by far my biggest gripe, and it’s a crucial component to understanding every other reason the three-shot foul is awful. I don’t think a lot of people fully understand how absurdly rich the 3-shot reward is for a common shooting foul.

Pardon me while I take you through some my math. It won’t be terrible, I promise.

First things first — 3-pointers barely produce any more points than 2-pointers, on average. The league hits 35.2 percent of its 3s and 52.0 percent of its 2s last season, meaning both shots produced nearly identical expected returns – 1.04 points for 2s, 1.06 points for 3s.

From that perspective, giving an additional shot for a shooting foul on a 3-pointer compared to a 2-pointer makes no sense — the shooter wasn’t likely to score more points on the initial shot.

But the return on a shooting foul for these types is now radically different. Using league averages, the expected return on a 3-shot foul is 2.33 points – three times the league average free throw rate (76.6 percent), plus a small dollop for the possibility of an offensive board on a missed third shot. (Only about 11 percent of missed free throws are rebounded by the offense, and only 23.9 percent of them are missed in the first place. Ballpark the average ROI on an offensive board is 1.2 points, leading to whopping 0.03 point increase. In reality, teams try much harder on the offensive glass when awful foul shooters are at the line, but we’ll ignore that for the sake of methodological clarity here).

That contrasts with 1.56 points on a two-shot foul.

In reality, the ROI on a 3-shot foul is even better because of who draws those fouls. News flash: Andre Drummond and Dwight Howard aren’t getting fouled shooting 3s. Only threatening 3-point shooters draw these whistles, and most of them are very good free-throw shooters too. Additionally, second and third free throws convert at a slightly better than than the first one. As ESPN’s Kevin Pelton recently reported, players league-wide shot 87.1 percent on the third shot of a three-shot foul last season, compared to just 80 percent on the first attempt.

As a result, the expected ROI on 3-shot fouls isn’t 2.33 points, it’s actually more like 2.56 … a full point higher than the two-shot foul.

In fact, check this out: That return on a three-shot foul is so excessive that, on average, committing one is about as bad as committing a flagrant! The second shot on a flagrant can’t be rebounded, so the two shots on average are worth 1.53 points for the offense. The team then inbounds on a dead ball, which is the lowest efficiency initial condition for offense – yielding 1.07 points per possession last season, according to our Seth Partnow. That brings our total for the trip to 2.60 points.

So a three-shot foul hands the offense 2.56 points on average … and a flagrant gives it 2.60. It’s basically the same. Yikes.

To see how extreme a penalty it is, however, you need to understand not just the absolute value, but also the marginal value. A typical possession was worth 1.10 points in 2018-19 (I will use last year’s numbers for this exercise given the early stage of the season). As noted above, the average two-point shot was worth 1.04 (the league shot 52.0 percent on 2s), and an average 3-point shot was worth 1.06 (the league shot 35.3 percent on 3s). Offensive boards added an additional 0.13 points to the expectation on 2s and 0.18 on 3s. So that’s a marginal value of 0.07 points for a 2 (1.04+0.13-1.10), and 0.14 points for a 3 (1.06 + 0.18 – 1.10).

But a three-shot foul? Not only does it more than double the value of a possession, from 1.10 points to 2.56 points, but also its marginal value of 1.56 points dwarfs that of common fouls. Let’s see here how a 3-shot foul changes things:

Marginal value of shot types, 2018-19
Three-shot foul 1.56
Two-shot foul 0.46
Average three-point attempt 0.14
Average two-point attempt 0.07
A two-shot foul produces a 0.39-point marginal return relative to just letting the guy shoot. That’s a fair penalty. The return on a three-shot foul, however, is 1.42 — nearly FOUR TIMES as much.

Again, the outsized penalty is a huge reason for this rule’s awfulness, because it influences all kinds of other behavior. A lot of it is subtle — for instance, here’s Damian Lillard with an attempt he would never consider if it weren’t for the fact that he might get three shots. Certainly he’s not trying to make a 3-point shot here.

This happens a lot, actually. A huge chunk of three-shot fouls are the result of players playing against the rules rather than the opponent — either guards like Lillard leaning into an ugly heave after turning the corner on a screen, or catch-and-shoot specialists kicking a leg out to reach out and tag a defender. Maybe he doesn’t get the call every time, but it’s the outsized return that makes the attempt worth the investment.

And here’s the beautiful basketball that same play yields when it doesn’t work:

It even impacts areas you wouldn’t consider — such as the coach’s challenge. From an ROI basis, far and away the best use of it is to challenge a leg-kick three-shot foul and turn 2.56 points into an offensive foul — to the point that coaches should probably save their challenge for three quarters in case one of these comes up.

More contact, not less
Because of the outsized return on 3-shot fouls, and that players KNOW about the outsize return, they’ve modified their behavior accordingly. Rather than avoid collisions when they rise up for a jumper, smart players seek it out. As a result, a mission designed to protect shooters and reduce contact (and hopefully injuries) has had the unintended consequence of increasing it. Several players — not even elite ones — have quickly adopted the habit of kicking their non-shooting leg out and forward in hopes of attracting a three-shot foul, creating conditions for ankle sprains rather than removing them. It’s exactly what the league was originally trying to prevent.

It’s remarkable to see how much players’ behavior changes on 3-point jump shots versus two-point jump shots. The clip above with Forbes is a great example, but it’s not hard to find others. In fact, it’s not hard to find them with Bryn Forbes (or any other volume 3-point shooter, for that matter) … and you can actually see it the most in clips where players aren’t fouled. Here is Forbes searching out contact with his right leg, hoping he can tag Terrence Ferguson and create a 3-shot collision.

For a more egregious example, here is T.J. Warren’s submission into the pantheon, just praying he can get a piece of Cedi Osman with his right leg:

Now that you’ve seen it NOT work, here’s what it looks like when it does. Kelly Oubre was awarded three shots for this bit of ridiculousness:

More subtly, here’s Kemba Walker rising up with his left leg well behind him and behind the 3-point line. George Hill’s feet never totally cross the 3-point line, yet somehow “foul” Kemba’s left leg by being in position to receive Kemba’s love tap. For a right-handed shooter, this is, um, not natural:

For a more common example, it’s possible James Harden would have been fouled on this play by Dillon Brooks anyway, but he sticks out his left leg to make sure of it.

OK, fine, let’s talk about Harden
In particular, his left leg. Here’s another one. In real time it looks like Jimmy Butler annihilated him. Zapruder it and you see Harden rise up for a normal shot before he sees Butler and plays tag with his left leg.

And again, more blatantly, here he gets the Nets’ Taurean Prince with a piece of extended-leg absurdity only highlighted by Brooklyn’s monochrome court palette.

Finally, let’s give credit where it’s due. Shout out to Tyler Ford, who nabbed Harden here on his leg kick. Not all heroes wear capes. I don’t think it’s an accident that he made the call from behind the play and a bit away from it — the ref on the sideline is actually too close to see both the hands and feet of the shooter. More on that in a minute.

The Refs can’t call it correctly
Another unintended consequence of the three-shot foul is that it highlights how awful the officials are at calling it. It’s not their fault — it has to do with their position on the court and the impossibility of what’s asked of them.

We’re giving a huge reward on a play where a significant portion of the calls are just flat-out wrong.

You think I’m just going to pull more Harden clips? Think again. Here’s our very first three-shot foul of the season, an egregious leg kick by New Orleans’ Kenrich Williams that should have been an offensive foul (if not a flagrant); the dude basically tripped Pascal Siakam in midair.

Sideways leg kicks by shooters are very difficult for officials to see due to the geography of the court. We don’t want officials standing in the middle of it, for good reason. But most 3-point attempts either come from the corner, or from the top of the key — the two places an official standing at the coach’s box is mostly like to be looking from a straight-on vantage point. That gives them little to no depth perception to see if a leg is kicked sideways or straight out, making them suckers for preying shooters. We can’t always see it from the camera angle, either.

Props to Eric Dahlen, who missed the Williams call above but nails Forbes with the left leg maneuver on a very difficult to see call here:

The other issue that comes up is that sometimes the officials are too close, particular on wing 3-point attempts. They can’t possibly be looking at both hands and feet when the players are right on top of them, so they have to guess. Here’s a clip where Tom Washington ends up with both the shooter and defender right in his lap and essentially has to blindly extrapolate whether the shooter’s leg got clipped. Combined with Harden’s left-leg voodoo, you can guess the result.

Before we finish, I should point out something else — I’m only pointing out one kind of error in these clips. Officials also struggle to correctly identify three-shot fouls for some of the same reasons I’ve listed above, something the Rockets outlined last spring before the Golden State series in their Magna Gripe-a missive to the league office. Again, these are huge calls (or misses) because the penalty is so severe.

Is this the game you want?
Hey, all you midrange jumper fans — now is your chance to chime in. All we’ve done with the three-shot foul is further incentivize every single team to tilt even more toward the same monolithic outcome of spreading the floor and shooting a ton of catch-and-shoot 3s.

With defenses disincentivized from challenging the shot, and the occasional super bonus of a 3-shot foul juicing expected returns from the strategy, teams would be crazy NOT to go in that direction. Anybody who wants to see some stylistic distinctions left in this league should at least be thinking about how to favor the 3-point shot a bit less. Changing the three-shot foul is one obvious, lightly intrusive means.

So, summing it all up: The three-shot foul creates a massively disproportionate penalty to the crime committed, on a play type that officials have difficulty calling correctly. It also likely creates more contact and injury potential rather than reducing it, and incentivizes both boorish behavior and stylistic monotony that make the game less entertaining. The league can go back to three shots in the final two minutes to eliminate intentional fouling incentives late in games; we already have several other rules that change in the last two minutes.

But for the first 46 minutes, it’s clearly a bad rule. And if you still don’t think so, let me leave you with this magical piece of basketball from Trae Young as my parting gift:

Simply changing it to a two-short foul would eliminate a lot of the worst incentives and cheap foul-hunting, while also introducing a more fair penalty for a shot that isn’t any more valuable than 2-pointer at the time of release.

The three-shot foul stinks. It’s time for it to go.

thats really good

agree 100%

twolves announcers were talking about this 3pt 2ft thing during todays game

2ft is far too close for the 3pt line

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/28145944/sources-nba-considering-reseeding-conference-finalists-postseason-play-in

all for conferenceless playoffs but the in season tourney just seems like a novelty to distract from the fact that individual regular season games dont matter, they shd fix that fundamental problem

yeah not in favor of the tournament thing

the most important reason to go to the single 2-pt foul shot is to eliminate the lamest part of the game, which is the dead time between free throws and the high fives. very against the high fives

the high fives suck

nfl teams play 16 games a year and make way more money than the nba, the march madness tv contract is bigger than the entire nba contract, nba shd think about these things

scarcity creates ~value~ heads up

The NFL plays as many games as they can without the average career length being 2 years

yeah I'm not sure the two are really comparable

after reading more about the proposal I think I hate everything about it

it's really telling that their brilliant ideas actually result in a scenario where some teams might play *more* than 82 games.

there's not much to say about the in-season tournament idea other than it's a really stupid idea that no one will care about. bill simmons couldn't have even thought of this

the play-in games basically risk a 10 seed potentially advancing over a 7 seed with something like 10 more regular season wins, which makes me wonder what the point of the regular season is. it could encourage resting. and then you could have a 9 or 10 seed playing a 1 seed and making the first round even worse

the reseeding is a good idea but they should just do it 1-16

they're just throwing darts because they can't fathom that fewer games is the solution

why does there have to be any solution? I know viewership is down this year but hadn't the league been doing great? have they considered that maybe it's temporary because the warriors suck and 2 of the 5 best players in the league are injured?

not really a ratings guy but i would think that the two LA teams being good would mean the league had higher hopes for this year than what they're currently getting. i thought i heard that local broadcast ratings are down all over the place so it's not just national showcase games. while they're in the current round of tv contracts they will be doing great. problem comes when they need to renew in a couple years if ratings still aren't strong.

regardless of ratings, seems like we're hitting a crest of dissatisfaction with the 82-game schedule. the nba is more or less proposing to shuffle it which makes no sense to me. the midseason tournament is inane, i can't believe they're actually putting it out there.

also "load management" is al over the media, not great press!

xp it’s actually bad that both of the Los Angeles teams are really good because East Coast markets don’t watch West Coast games

Bill Simmons was 1st guy I heard talk about midseason tourney

yeah

wasn't the original simmons plan to do a tourney for the 8th seed?

makes me wonder what the point of the regular season is

i think this about most american sports, tbh

its to enjoy a bit of sport

the nfl regular season is pretty perfect in that its fewer games and fewer teams making the playoff make it function almost on a playoff level

baseball i have no idea what goes on in the head of baseball watchers but having different pitchers on different days breaks up the monotony somewhat i guess

playoffless euro soccer is def the most rigorous system for picking the best team there will be no upsets but its kinda a bummer not having the "playoff atmosphere" they compensate for that by adding excitement w promotion/relegation and seeding for various other tournaments and with singing and rioting

another thing about euro soccer is theres like 9 teams across 5 leagues who have any chance and if youre a fan of a different team u just have to hope a russian oligarch improves yr fortunes

also each country has its own league so the best players dont play each other

baseball i have no idea what goes on in the head of baseball watchers but having different pitchers on different days breaks up the monotony somewhat i guess

it's better as a pre-TV, pre-night games sport. wandering over to the local stadium in your ratty suit and hat to check out your local squadron, the lush grass spread before you, it's a nice way to spend a summer day in the city.

oh going to the game is nice dont get me wrong and tbh i used to be a baseball watcher myself but i dont remember what i was thinking about now

also each country has its own league so the best players dont play each other

― lag∞n, Monday, November 25, 2019 12:06 PM (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

there shd be one eurowide super league w promotion/relegation from the respective country systems

(and plz dont tell me theres already the euroleague i know the difference between a tournament and a league)

wasn't the original simmons plan to do a tourney for the 8th seed?

― call all destroyer, Monday, November 25, 2019 11:48 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yeah he came up with the bottom seed tourney at the end of the season iirc, never heard of this mid season thing till now

feel like he also talked abt the midseason thing or at least ive heard of it somewhere before

i have now thought a bunch about these proposals and listened to some pros and cons and honestly i don't care for any of them. they don't offer any meaningful progress toward making either the regular season or the first round of the playoffs more competitive.

the play-in for the bottom of the playoffs is....fine. it will make the end of the reg season slightly more interesting and in theory reduce tanking at the top but i do wonder how the incentives will work out over time (e.g. if you're the 10 seed don't you really want to stay in the lottery even if you're playing well down the meaningless stretch at the end of the season?) but the first round 8/1 and 7/2 matchups will still suck and be worthless regardless of the outcome.

reseeding the final four is dumb and a very tactical response to an unfortunate situation from two finals ago. i still like the romance of having to go through a conference rival and seeing those matchups play out over a number of years. also the two teams in the finals have only played each other twice which adds some intrigue. the league needs to take the long view on this.

the tournament--here are the pros i've heard:

- there are ~10 teams right now with no winning tradition that would go all-in to win it
- gradually over time interia will cause people and teams to care
- it opens up the possibility of reducing the number of games even more over time
- what the hell, nothing could be worse than the current regular season

it's telling that they can't even find a good time in the schedule to do it. where they've landed is probably the best bet but it's still really early and a lot of teams are just figuring out how they want to play.

my main thing is that even if you believe that ultimately it will become something that matters, the first couple years are going to be so, so bad. players aren't going to take it seriously. coaches are the most conservative people in the game probably and i doubt any of them are going to want to push their guys hard to win something in early december. i see it being awkward and weird and public perception could just render it d.o.a.

it's also the most roundabout possible way of trying to address lack of interest in the regular season. it doesn't make the non-tournament games matter more. it doesn't address load management. it sure as hell isn't going to make the season *feel* shorter or fix the slog that is march and april. the format is going to be confusing to casuals. the rumor that they're looking to do it at neutral sites is insane.

finally, maybe, just maybe, looking to european soccer with its own longstanding traditions and issues is not the best place to find inspiration to fix engagement in a relatively young american sports league. the reason the play the FA cup is because they've been playing the FA cup for 150 years, and afaik the only cool thing that happens in the FA cup is when a team from one of the lower divisions makes a run--the same thing that happens in the NCAA tournament which is also impossible to replicate in the nba. meanwhile, they conveniently do not look at one of the best features of the premier league which is that each team plays a home and home and every game feels like an event.

both the play-in and the midseason tournament are Really bad ideas imo. its classic fudging the results of a process instead of fixing the process to give better results

having fewer teams make the playoffs seems good but giving a whole round as a bye also seems dicey

mb go back to best of 5 first round with byes for the top 4 teams

i'd love to see them do something closer to the nfl first round. the top 2 teams in each conference have no reason to play a first round series, they're not losing it.

why did they go to 7 games in 1st rnd? was that after nuggs beat the #1 seed in 94??

or a maybe an international city which i guess could be cool

vancouver

havana may be available in the near future

shams: The NBA presented three comprehensive anti-tanking concepts to its Board of Governors on Wednesday, with modifications expected to each before a formal vote in May, per ESPN sources.

1. 18 teams in draft lottery (seeds 7-15 in each conference) – flattened odds, with bottom 10 teams having an 8% chance, the remaining 20% odds distributed in decreasing order for 11 through 18, and and a lottery drawing for all 18 picks.

2) 22 teams in lottery using 2-year record (seeds 7-15, plus the four playoff first round exits in both conferences). Lottery teams would reach a minimum win total floor in each season, such as 25 wins. If a team falls short of the floor, it gets slotted to meet the floor. Top 4 drawn as part of lottery, as is currently.

3) 18 teams in a "5 by 5" lottery – bottom 5 teams have equal odds for the top pick, with lottery formed for picks 1-5. Bottom 5 teams have a floor at 10; those that fall out of top 5 get sorted in a separate drawing.

why dont they want to do the tombstone wins they love complicated novelties

who wants to tell them that all of those ideas would still result in teams trying to lose

#3 is just a variation on the current situation if i'm reading it right, don't know why they'd even suggest it. the minimum win floor is mildly interesting, haven't really thought about that one. but yeah, none of these are gonna eliminate tanking. i'm a tombstone wins guy too, it would create some weird behavioral economics in that liminal period just before and after a team is eliminated from the playoffs, but in the grand scheme of things it seems to be by far the best idea

the PWHL uses tombstone wins to determine draft order...bit hard to see all the effects in an eight-team league, in which I believe 4 teams make the playoffs. but it can be done.

i think tombstone wins are complicated and therefore bad. they would still result in tanking and reverse tanking type stuff but would be even more obscure to the regular viewer. just flatten the odds. we've already seen that bad franchises that suck year in year out can't be saved by a high pick anyway

what is reverse tanking

gniknat

paddywack

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HE38ua9bAAAElDQ?format=jpg&name=medium

There have been two days in NBA history, spanning 80 years, where at least nine games were played with an average margin of victory being at least 24 points.

Only two such days. In 80 years.

One was yesterday.

The other was Sunday.

April 3, 2026: 9 games, 24.4 average margin.
March 29, 2026: 9 games, 24.0 average margin.

The next biggest average margin on a day of 9 or more games? April 2, 2021 -- 10 games, 21.7 margin.

tanking maximized

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/HFent53WIAATVvo?format=png&name=900x900

thats bad

curry late scratch tonight and obv no luka (or reaves or jimmy). jaylen out tonight too.

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/48582233/nba-playoffs-2026-foul-3-san-antonio-spurs-portland-trail-blazers-impact

ban this abomination

Creating some kind of specific rule just to ban this seems like it would just push the NBA game further away from the game of basketball, as it is played internationally, or in US colleges, high schools, and everywhere else on the planet -- all in the name of making it more of a "product" instead of a game with consistent rules from the tip off to the final second.

agree it should be banned

banning take fouls and hackas have been nice improvements add this to the pile

every sport has different rules at different levels of the game, partially bcz there's no access to VAR in elementary school soccer games. does the NBA need to also switch to one-and-one free throws because the NCAA does it?

anyway it's an interesting article, and its stats show basically no discrepancy btwn fouling up 3 and playing straight up in the NBA...92% chance of winning up 3 with 18 or less seconds left, either way. But the sample size is small enough that it's probably not a definitive proof that the strategy doesn't work.

i think whether the strategy does or doesn't work is immaterial to the core issue which is that it's inarguably worse entertainment than playing out the ends of games, and for that reason it should be outlawed

This is a natural consequence of the three point shot. The entire hoops world migrated to the three point shot and it has changed all kinds of strategies on both offense and defense. Everyone loves it. This is just a continuation of those changes. Intentional fouls and parades to the ft line have been an accepted game strategy forever. Teams that are behind in the waning seconds use it constantly. Why in this one particular instance, where it is used by the team that is ahead, is it suddenly an "abomination" that must be done away with?

because it's anti-competitive. fouling when you're down is in the service of competition -- it's an attempt to introduce variance, and that can lead to entertaining, unexpected outcomes. fouling when you're up is the opposite -- it is intended to reduce variance, and that leads to expected and less entertaining outcomes.

anti-competitive?? seems to me that the team fouling is trying to win a very close game that hasn't been decided, yet.

leads to... less entertaining outcomes

OK. you can claim it is anti-entertainment. except, ime fans of the team that squeaks out a one-point win by fouling up three with a few seconds left seem pretty happy with that result -- entertained, even. I bet you don't boo Spoelstra and complain when they foul three up and cash in the win. or maybe you do?

fans of the winning team being happy that certain rules allowed their team to win is not a relevant context for how the NBA should be looking at its rules

fans of losing teams appreciate those wins even more, you know

that certain rules allowed their team to win

The team that scores the most points wins. Those are the rules that apply to both teams. But I'd be interested in hearing your idea of what the new rule should look like. I seriously doubt it could result in more entertaining games, unless you narrow the situations where it would apply in very arbitrary ways. It would be especially nasty if it put a special handicap only on the leading team, who obtained their lead fair and square and had every reason to think this should be honored, not penalized.

relegation zone! (there is no actual relegation zone)

https://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/48619907/sources-nba-eyes-new-anti-tanking-proposal-draft-lottery

theyre trying to trick us by using the word we love

its funny that in trying to solve tanking the nba added another byzantine rule set, silvers lawyer league