(670 The Score) Ball State professor Nick Elam, the creator of the Elam Ending in basketball that sets a target score to achieve to determine a winner while eliminating the game clock late in games, believes the format would be best used in the NBA by adding seven points to the leading team’s total with three minutes remaining in games.
“In the NBA, we really don’t see the flaws of the game – stalling – until about the last three minutes or so of a game, the fouling even later than that,” Elam said on the Parkins & Spiegel Show on Tuesday. “They do have a media timeout (around) the three-minute mark, so for the NBA, I would actually keep the clock around all the way until the three-minute mark. And I would actually go with a plus-seven setting for the NBA. And the reason for that is, OK, if you’re cutting out three minutes of a 48-minute game, we got to figure out what amount, what point total is going to give us about three minutes of game time back in? If you look at scoring rates and NBA basketball, over a three-minute span, you’d expect about seven points per team to be scored.
So that’s where the plus-seven comes from.”
The Elam Ending has been used in the NBA All-Star Game for the past three years. On Sunday, Team LeBron defeated Team Durant, 163-160, after the target score was set at 163 following the end of the third quarter. The target score was created as the NBA decided to add 24 points – 24 is the late, great Kobe Bryant’s jersey number – to the leading team’s score at the end of the third quarter. Team Durant held a 139-138 lead at the conclusion of the third quarter.
While that’s one way to use the Elam Ending, Elam himself also envisions it being used in a narrower window late in games, hence his suggestion about getting rid of the clock in NBA games with three minutes remaining.
Elam also responded to a comment about seven points seeming like a low number to add to create a target score given the frenzy with which talented players can score, to which he responded he’d also be happy to have it set a bit higher and that tweaks are welcome after trial and error.
“It’s always one of those things where you work it out on paper, but then you’re going to learn things the instant you put it in play on the court,” Elam said. “You’re going to learn something that you can improve it going forward.”
As an example, Elam noted The Basketball Tournament initially used plus-seven as the target score for one year before switching to plus-eight.