In My Opinion: Scoring With the Clock Stopped

My life has involved an extraordinary amount of basketball recently. Not only have I been watching every game of the far too long NBA playoffs, but I have also become obsessed with this eras best sports writer, Bill Simmons. This obsession has driven me to read his unnecessarily long and complete book, The Book of Basketball. This book is a seven hundred page encyclopedia covering absolutely everything you need to know about the history of basketball and much, much more. It contains the best teams ever, the 96 best players ever, famous sports debates, the secret of basketball, and numerous comical tangents. I have learned more about basketball in the past few weeks than I have over the rest of my life. I strongly recommend this book to any true basketball fans.

Perhaps it is this influx of basketball knowledge, or maybe the fact I'm looking for something to blog about but I now feel confident to express my opinion regarding the phrase, "Scoring with the clock stopped." This is a phrase that announcers commonly use to describe something that is supposedly important in basketball, but in reality it has to be the most idiotic phrase sans anything Dicky V says (Can't believe that guy was a GM back in the day).

Let's break this down. This phrase is used near the end of games when one team is trailing. Announcers like to say that you do not want to let a team that is trailing score while the clock is stopped. In other words, you do not want to foul them. I for the life of me cannot grasp the logic of this phrase. If a guy is driving towards the basket and is going to get an easy layup, time does not matter. Whether or not you foul him and he shoots free throws or he ends up making a layup the time left will be exactly the same. The clock stops after a made basket, so time is essentially unaffected whether or not the player is fouled. This make "scoring with the clocked stopped" an entirely pointless phrase. Announcers say it as though it somehow saves the trailing team time to be shooting free throws rather than having a layup. This is simply not true.

However, I should clarify some things. This does not apply to fouls do not occur around the basket. Obviously fouling away from the basket would save the trailing team the time of getting to the hoop. I assume this is what most announcers mean, but they still use the phrase with regards to fouls around the basket when it makes NO SENSE. I should also add that if you do foul you want to make sure they do not make a shot. A potential three point play could be devastating, whereas a good, hard foul could save a point or two.

So this is my opinion of why the phrase, "scoring with the clocked stopped" makes no sense. If I am wrong about this I would be love to know why. In other news the US is still awful at soccer and the NBA is doing its best to make itself look rigged (Com'n Stern).

In My Opinion is Back

Hello World,

After a long sabbatical to gather my thoughts (Really I'm just lazy), I have to decided to retry this blogging thing. Inspired by Bill Simmons and his excellent book, The Book of Basketball, I felt so moved as to resurrect my writing career. As I had mentioned in my post about six months ago this is a blog filled with my opinions on the world. It is not my intention to offend anyone or make any enemies, but simply to write some things and at least imagine someone out there in the world is reading it. Also I need something to do because about all I do right now is work, workout, eat, and watch the NBA playoffs. Hopefully this will force me to create a little more balance in my life. 

Enjoy

Sam