I have an opinion! Speaking only for myself and no other, I would like to posit that any playoff structure that encourages a team to call a last-second timeout to get one more jam in, when the game margin is like HUNDREDS and HUNDREDS of points, is completely antithetical to the entire point of having playoffs. In addition to being Wrong in the sports sense, its also usually mathematically Wrong in the rankings metagame sense. I have seen many many games in playoffs where the team that is getting routed does this in an apparent attempt to make the final score closer. If you were being consistently outscored for the first 59 minutes and 30 seconds, isnt it much more likely that you will continue being outscored in the extra time you just created? Also, youre going to be playing more games through the course of the weekend, so why risk an injury for absolutely no reward whatsoever? I think this could be defensible in the final game of a teams weekend, where maybe somebodys retiring and you want to give them a final jam or somebody is close to a record or the margin is really close to a psychological threshold you want to beat (say, you didnt want to lose by triple digits, or you wanted to get into triple digits). Its also OK if youre just out there to have fun and want more time to have more fun, but fun is a quaint concept these days. But in general, just because you CAN stop the clock doesnt mean you HAVE to. Letting remaining time run off the clock to end the game isnt giving up; its just acknowledging basic reality. Stop clock abuse!
Posted on: Fri, 03 Oct 2014 20:19:41 +0000
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