Ultimate Fastbreak Basketball

Some teams would do that, yes (some wouldn't). By dint of the bonus point the 10-12-15-17 -foot jumpers would now BE better shots.

The strong incentive to push the ball upcourt fast (and also to employ pressure defense although that's a whole other discussion) would serve, and there's no better metaphor, as a laxative for the current constipated sludgeball style of play which has come to completely strangle the sport.

More players would bust upcourt faster, teams would make entry passes faster, and players who are not in good enough shape to keep up the pace are going to drag behind, and guess what, 4-on-2 break.

The absolute inaction which currently constitutes the first 10-15 seconds of 90% of every possession would be boiled away. Even if you didn't get a shot off in "break time," you would be already into your offense, making cuts, setting screens, and while you could still opt to milk clock, you'd have to completely break off your offense to do so.

As I said several posts above, it would drive you nuts if EVERY team played like this all the time. But the reason the entire sport of basketball has gone completely to shit is that nobody plays like this, ever. Except for the 1/100 exception of college or HS teams who use "The System."

And everybody plays the other way, "the right way," where they walk the ball up court, slowly and carefully, patiently dribble 20 seconds off the shot clock, look inside to see if somebody's open for a layup, and if not, chuck up a 3 at the shot clock buzzer.

Ultimately average teams are going to be average teams no matter what "system" you use. If you opt to use a high-speed system like Grinnell/LMU, you need to have some attributes to make it profitable for you: you need to have depth, you need to have players who are fast with a lot of endurance, you need to have a few guys who can shoot 3s and you need to have a couple of good decision-makers in the open court. If you don't have those, ultimately it won't pay off.

Of course, any time a fast-break-system team plays a grind-it-out-system team and loses, the Larry Brown/Norman Dale acolytes/jihadists leap up on a table, pound their chests, raise their burning torches, and proclaim another moral victory for "playing the right way" (as opposed to 'ghetto ball' which is a WHOLE other discssion let's not get into right now.)

Unfortunately, the fact that any one team wins any particular game doesn't mean they were more noble, more courageous, more dedicated, more morally upright, etc etc, it mainly means that on that given day they happened to hit more of their shots.

The problem with "playing the right way" (i.e. the current customary sludgeball philosophy) is that it is an entire system of play designed to neutralize talent differentials and maximize the chances to win assuming you have relatively equal playing talent to your opponent.

So presume you do have relatively equal talent to your opponent, and the opposing coach is employing the identical talent-neutralizing strategies as you are, what do you get? Sludgeball. Constipation. The immovable object meeting the immovable object. 67-63 NBA games. 45-42 college games. 33-31 high school games.

This game needs an enema.