Whether you were curled up in a blanket in your room or furiously cheering along in D-Hall, you might have noticed that the NBA All-Star game felt real, even if just for one quarter. The competitive nature of the game was due in large part to a new format the NBA introduced.
What is universally known as the “Elam Ending,” named after its founder, Nick Elam — a professor at Ball State University — is a new style of play introduced this year. In this type of game, the highest score plus an additional amount of points becomes the target score to win (24 additional points for the all-star game in honor of the late Kobe Bryant). Thus the “target score” you might have noticed in the bottom right corner of your television on Sunday night said 157.
The purpose of this new strategy was to make what is often a waste of a game — the ending — into a competitive clash between the best basketball players in the world.
While the NBA has only specifically applied it to the All-Star game thus far, this format has benefits that could help increase competition late in games. Instead of teams dribbling the clock out and slowing down the pace of play, they could be chasing a final total without a running clock. While there are obstacles in the way of making this a reality, there’s no reason to think it cannot be done.
It wasn’t until 1954 that the NBA instituted a shot clock. The reason for adding one was also related to a pace of play issue. In 1950, a game between the Fort Wayne Pistons and Minneapolis Lakers ended in a record low score of 19-18. Yes, you read that correctly. 19-18. In an NBA basketball game.
The pace of play issues that plagued the league back then are beginning to come to light now, thus prompting the league to “experiment,” if you will, with the Elam Ending. With ratings going down for all but three teams this year, there are certainly legitimate reasons for concern about what’s going on. The reasons for this drop off vary but a significant and undeniable factor is the mobility of players in recent years, which is ironically another innovation that has been useful for the NBA.
When LeBron James said the words “I am going to take my talents to South Beach to join the Miami Heat '' in 2010, everything changed. The NBA became mobile. Players started to feel comfortable changing teams in free agency. To use a recent example: When superstar players — let's say Russell Westbrook and Paul George — are with a small market team such as the Oklahoma City Thunder, the team’s ratings will be relatively high.
However, if and when these players decide to leave the organization or requests to be traded, many of that team’s fans will stop watching, as their favorite players are gone. Even for a dedicated fan base such as the Thunder, their ratings are down 51% this year. Even though, if the season ended today, they would be in the playoffs, they lost over half of their viewership in large part due to two players. The Rockets and Clippers, their new teams, are certainly not making up those lost viewers.
The refreshing aspects of making the NBA mobile have no doubt benefited the league greatly. However, the downsides of small-market teams stagnating cannot be ignored. While there is not an immediate solution to this exact problem, a way to increase viewers immediately and in a large quantity is to implement the Elam Ending.