Taking hoops back about 60 years

Posted on Fri Apr 27, 2007 at 10:40:39 AM EST in NBA
More on: NBA, weird, Tom Newell (all tags)

Tom Newell is the son of coaching great Pete Newell and after spending his entire life involved with the game of basketball, Tom thinks he just might have figured out the formula for advancing the game beyond its current boundaries and into the future. The only problem is that his changes could turn the NBA into the WNBA and turn the WNBA into church rec league ball.

Newell wants to eliminate all the fun involved with the game and infuse it with countless, excitement inducing chest passes by raising the rim to 11 feet, doing away with the 3-pointer until the fourth quarter and increasing the shot clock by six seconds to half a minute. By raising the rim Newell is hoping to virtually eliminate the dunk from the playbook altogether.

That's not the way the game was invented," Newell said. "It was intended to be a template of how to work together and how to set screens and move without the ball and make the various passes that are necessary to make the plays successful.

We'll see just how pathetic his idea is because Newell has scheduled an exhibition game for June 16 in Seattle. But Newell is taking this game pretty seriously, he's going to have computers set up to chart every play that is run and then compare the numbers to a typical NBA game and he's got a psychology professor who will gauge the audience's reactions. We're guessing they will mostly consist of yawns, stretches and the occasional boos.

Links:
[The Seattle Times]: 11-foot hoops? Newell to run a test in June

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