Tom Verducci proposes the 'Bonus At-Bat'

Correct

 

Why not have a designated free throw shooter. Dwight Howard gets to play in the 4th quarter and Reggie Miller can kill the Knicks, again

 

How about if you hit a home run you get to fuck the pitcher's wife?

 

Star players on mediocre teams would be very tempted to throw games if an upset loomed, I would think. Why would you let your Mediocres upset a stud team in the first round when you could make sure they lose and get taken along with the favorites the rest of the way?

WRT the original post, it's obviously stupid in the sense that it should never be implemented, but it's a little fun to think about. Off the top of my head, it would roughly double the value of your best hitter. Having a Bonus Guy would become absolutely crucial to having a great team. It would have been even more fun before offense bottomed out. PED-Peak Bonds with that option is practically a game-breaker.

 

Can we get a sliding scale for this?
Like, if you get an extra base hit it's a handjob, and you get a blowie for a walk-off hit?

 

For a grand slam, it's the wives of every pitcher who is charged with a run. I think there was one a couple of weeks ago that was four pitchers.

 

A semi-serious one for basketball:

Make free throws count two points.

Make all FT situations one shot, with a live rebound if missed.

No shots on common fouls until you're into the bonus. Take the ball out of bounds.

Basket-plus-foul situations remain the same. Yes, that means you could get a 4-point or even a 5-point play if you get fouled during a shot.

On fouls on 3-point attempts, the fouled team would have an option:

-- Take a single, 2-point free throw;

-- Elect to take a throw-in from the sideline, with the provision the defensive players may not step outside the 3-point circle until the ball is touched inbounds. If there is less than 3 seconds left on the game or shot clock when such a foul occurs, the clocks are reset to 3.0 seconds.

The net effect: Eliminate all the stand-around dead-ball free throws on the first attempts of 2-shot fouls. Cut the time needed to shoot 1-and-1's in half.

Getting rid of all these dead-ball free throws, I would bet, would cut five minutes off the time of the average college and NBA game.

 

The four- and five-point plays are dealbreakers. Last thing the NBA needs is officials and foul calls becoming even *more* important.

 

The TV makeup is rotting Verducci's brain.

 

The strategic tradeoff would be that coaches would have to loosen up (gasp) on the current sumo-wrestling body-bumping and arm-grabbing dogpiles under baskets which make driving to the hole for a basket effectively impossible.


Plus, the NBA would love love love the *possibility* of a 5-point play in the course of legitimate game action (not involving multiple bench technicals, etc etc.) With a 5-point play in the realm of actual possiblity, a team down by 10 with one minute left would have a non-zero chance of winning. It wouldn't actually happen more than once every five years or so, but it would become the stuff of legend.

 

Ghost runner. Duh.

 

Instead of allowing the refs to decide, just allow any shot that is made from beyond the half-court line to be four points. In the final minute, it can be worth five.

Then you can have teams trying to launch half-court shots instead of fouling everyone.

Oh, and another rule: Only 2 timeouts per half. One full, and one 20-second. There's plenty of other breaks to discuss strategy.