Miserable free-throw parade ruins Celtics vs. Cavaliers finish, and here’s how the NBA can fix this problem

The Cleveland Cavaliers knocked off the Boston Celtics 115-111 on Sunday in what should have been, and easily could have been, thrilling fashion. With his Cavs trailing by five with a little over three minutes left, Donovan Mitchell proceeded to rattle off three 3-pointers and 11 points over the next two minutes. But instead of ending the game on that high note, we were subjected to the all-too-familiar and frankly torturous conclusion of watching 17 free throws over the final 34 seconds — which, in real time, lasted almost a half-hour. 

It was the latest piece of evidence admitted into the case against traditional, timed basketball endings. Or, put another way, in the case for the Elam Ending, which eliminates the running clock at the four-minute mark of the fourth quarter. From that point forward, the game is played to a target score of seven points greater than the leading team’s total. 

For instance, if Team A is beating Team B 104-100 with four minutes to play, the clock stops and the game becomes a race to 111 points. 

From an entertainment standpoint, it’s a no-brainer. Not only does it guarantee a game-winning shot, but it more importantly eliminates all incentive for the trailing team to intentionally foul as more free throws would only provide opportunity for the winning team to move closer to the final total. 

We’ve seen the Elam Ending in a pair of NBA All-Star games and it’s been used for years in The Basketball Tournament, which was created by Jon Mugar, who explained the logic behind the Elam Ending to CBS Sports’ James Herbert prior to its NBA introduction at the 2020 All-Star Game. 

“If [James] Naismith invented the game 130 years ago with the Elam Ending and someone came along 130 years later and tried to implement the timed ending, it would be like the biggest, most massive failure of all-time, with players hitting each other, everything going to the free-throw line. Fans would storm out after one game and say, ‘This is the dumbest thing ever,'” Mugar said. 

Why the NBA should implement the Elam Ending

Now listen, I love to hyperbolize. I’m quite prone to applying the “dumbest thing ever” label to things that aren’t, in fact, the dumbest thing ever. But in this case, choosing to suck all the life out of what should be wildly exciting endings to basketball games with a parade of 14 free throws over 15 seconds that end up taking 20 minutes to play is, in terms of basketball, quite literally the dumbest thing ever. 

Some day the NBA, and the world in general, is going to realize that “it’s the way it has always been done” is no rationale for continuing to do anything. We used to have cars without seat belts. That was dumb. We put in seat belts. That was smart. Let’s put in the Elam Ending, too. 

Having said that, I realize it’s a long shot that so-called traditionalists are going to accept, let alone implement, an idea as seemingly radical as the Elam Ending any time soon. But for the time being, is it too much to ask to legislate out this intentionally fouling when up three nonsense from the end-of-game equation? 

Have we forgotten that this is all about entertainment? Every bit of it. Owners, players, coaches, executives, trainers, shoe companies, TV networks and literally everyone who is reaping financial reward from the business of NBA basketball is doing so solely on the basis of entertainment. And there are few things more entertaining than a game-tying 3-pointer in the closing seconds. 

After Payton Pritchard hit a deep 3 to cut Cleveland’s lead to one with 17.2 seconds to play, the foul game started. Boston fouled Cleveland, which the Elam Ending would eliminate, and after Darius Garland made his two free throws, Cleveland committed its own (intentional) foul so that Boston wouldn’t have a chance to tie the game with a 3-pointer. 

And so the parade continued, back and forth, intentional foul after intentional foul, whistle after whistle, until finally, with no more time left to manipulate, Pritchard was forced to miss a free throw on purpose. He fired a bullet off the front of the rim in hopes of getting his own rebound. It nearly worked, but he was called for a violation for crossing the line before the ball actually made contact with the rim. 

This is how the game finally, mercifully, ended, with a series of gimmicks: intentional fouls and intentionally missed shots in the hopes of manipulating the outcome of a game that should have — and easily could have — ended in far more dramatic fashion. 

After Garland’s two free throws with 14.2 seconds left, the Celtics had three more possessions with a shot to tie the game with a 3, only they never got the chance to actually shoot a 3. They were fouled every time before that could happen. Fans who pay good (and often obscene) money to watch these games were robbed of that climactic conclusion to instead be subjected to a free-throw contest. 

How the NBA could easily legislate end-of-game fouling

It would be so easy to get rid of this garbage. The league has successfully legislated out take fouls (when defenses foul on purpose to stop fast breaks) in the sheer interest of entertainment, and it was right to do so. The league has largely done the same with flopping, which is now punished, or at least not rewarded, relatively consistently. 

The next change has to be bringing back the game-tying 3-pointer. We still see them because coaches are wired to be afraid of worst-case scenarios, which in this case would be a four-point play. But the ones who can resist their own paranoia know that fouling (before the shot, of course) with a three-point lead in the closing seconds is almost always the smart play from a competitive standpoint. 

That’s why the league has to make it a not-smart move. It’s not my job to figure out how to do that, but it’s actually pretty simple. With under 24 seconds to play in a three-point game, if you commit a foul on the ball outside the 3-point line, whether it’s on the shot or the ground, it’s three free throws. 

If you foul away from the ball and manage to manipulate the “hack-a-player” rules that are already supposed to be in place to stop that from happening, the offensive team, just like in football, has the right to decline the foul and take the ball out of bounds rather than take the free throws. 

Foul two straight times off the ball, and it’s a technical foul, which is one free throw plus possession. That’s all you need to make teams stop fouling when up three, and give the fans the exciting finishes they deserve with the money they’re paying. 

This is a problem the NBA must fix

Basketball is the only sport where, in these specific and crucial points of games, actions that are supposed to be detrimental to a team’s goal of winning — like fouls and missed free throws — actually become boons. In football, if you’re down six with one second left on the clock, the defense can’t strip you of the chance to throw one more pass to the end zone in hopes of tying the game by committing a penalty. All that will do is move the offense closer to the end zone. 

In soccer, if a penalty is committed but the referee sees that the offense had an advantage, the referee will signal for the foul but play is allowed to continue until a natural stopping point so as to not punish offenses who have gained an advantage and, more importantly, not stop an entertaining moment in its tracks. 

This is, and long has been, a singular and significant basketball problem. It’s time to fix it. The Elam Ending would be a cure-all, but until then, it’s real simple: If you’re down three with the ball, you are going to get a chance to tie the game. 

The NBA needs to make sure this happens by punishing intentional fouls the same way it has take fouls. The ending of this Boston-Cleveland game was a disgrace, plain and simple, and the league should be embarrassed by how long it’s taking to even acknowledge the problem, let alone take easy steps toward fixing it.