Sports Rules Are Never Set in Stone
Don’t be afraid of change.
Wednesday morning, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski reported that the NBA’s board of governors were set to approve a proposal to resume the league’s season, which has been suspended since March 11.
The proposal involves sending 22 teams (those currently in the playoffs plus an additional six teams — the Blazers, Pelicans, Kings, Spurs, Suns, and Wizards — that are currently within six games of a playoff spot) to Orlando to finish the season at Disney World.
Play would return on July 31st with each team playing eight regular-season games, after which at least the top seven seeds in each conference would be guaranteed a place in the playoffs. If the margin between the eight and ninth-place teams is within four games, a play-in tournament would occur, where the ninth-place team would have to defeat the eighth-place team twice in a row to secure the final spot. Following this, a traditional playoff would take place, with the league planning to crown a champion by October 12th.
While this plan accomplishes the goal of allowing the NBA to return and hopefully complete their season safely, it marks a significant departure from the traditional ending to the regular season. For eight teams, the season is already over. No one will play a full 82 games, and for the first time, there could be a play-in to decide the final spot in the postseason. Due to these differences in format, along with the more than four-month gap in the season and unique conditions under which the remaining games will be played, a significant portion of the NBA fan base believes that the eventual champions of this season should receive an asterisk next to their title.
I’ve already written about my distaste for the asterisk, and how people freely throw them around in an attempt to delegitimize achievement due to perceived unfairness. Asterisks allow us to realize that truth is not always objective. A person’s willingness to either celebrate an individual or team’s success or play it down as a result of outside circumstances is a function of that person’s opinion of the individual or team. If you wanted them to win, of course, it “counts”. However, if it is an unsatisfactory result, you’ll look for any reason for it not to stand.
In this way, truth, in matters which are not entirely black and white, is hardly about what happened at all, and instead about who things happened to. Any victory can be glorified or tarnished due to that fact.
Of course, the whole concept of asterisks is somewhat futile. They should be reserved for cases in which one party had an unfair advantage due to a deliberate breaking of the rules — for example, Lance Armstrong doping on the way to seven consecutive Tour de France titles. However, even in situations like these, while leagues and governing bodies can impose punishments and retroactively strip achievements, it doesn’t mean the achievements never occurred. It is impossible to replay the 1999–2005 Tours de France. And while each of those races (presumably) had a racer who was the highest-finishing non-doper, it doesn’t mean that any of those people won.
All of this is somewhat beside the point. Each NBA team has faced similar challenges this season as a result of COVID-19 and will operate under the same set of rules when play resumes. Not everyone will agree that this was the best plan to finish the season, but there is also nothing obviously unfair about the proposal given the necessary precautions that needed to be taken for this season to continue at all. In short, there is no reason to asterisk this season.
But despite the last several paragraphs, my objective is not simply to campaign against the asterisk. Like I said, I’ve done that before. No, what interests me is the concept that a new season structure, or, as exhibited many times throughout sports history, a changing of rules for play, immediately devalues the ensuing competition. That because this season doesn’t look like other NBA seasons, it’s not a “real” NBA season.
I, like most people, enjoy tradition and am somewhat reluctant to change. This is perfectly logical. Any “thing” we like has certain aspects and qualities that lead us to like it. Changes threaten to harm these aspects and qualities, thus hampering our overall enjoyment.
While these possibilities do exist, this one-sided perspective on change only holds up if we assume that the current environment is perfect. However, such an assumption both stands in opposition to progress and neglects the entire history of sports, which has consisted of repeated tinkering with the rules.
Early versions of the sports you love today would look almost unrecognizable. Consider that in the earliest widely-adopted ruleset for soccer, the “Laws of the Game” created by the Football Association in 1863, players were allowed to catch the ball. There were no goalkeepers, no penalty kicks, and no referees. Disputes were settled by team captains.
Among other things, American football began without helmets or forward passes. In baseball, it once took nine balls for a player to be given a walk. Why is a basketball hoop ten feet tall? Because that’s how high the railings Dr. James Naismith nailed the first peach baskets to. Why is the NBA three-point line 23 feet 9 inches away from the basket and 22 feet in the corners? Because that’s where Harlem Globetrotters founder and coach Abe Saperstein drew it in 1961, “arbitrarily”, as his son, Jerry, would later say. None of this is an exact science.
What makes a rule “right”? There is no inherently correct way for a sport to be. Over time, we simply make changes in order to improve our sports, and there can be several different motivators for that.
One could be to make the sport more balanced and ensure that no part of the game is exploitable in a way that incentivizes actions that go against what we want the sport to look like. For example, in American football, field goals were once worth five points, while touchdowns were only worth four. With the strength of today’s kickers, such a rule would make it so teams would never willingly score touchdowns, which defeats the goal of moving the ball into your opponent’s end zone. Over time, the rules corrected for this.
Other possible motivators could be to make a sport safer, more fun to play, or more aesthetically pleasing for a viewing audience. Sometimes, certain rules become less relevant over time as the game changes and need to be revised. In other circumstances, rules end up having unintended consequences that lead to modifications. No one expected the three-point line to eventually dominate the NBA and lead to the near-extinction of the traditional big man. To preserve the game’s diversity, rules may need to adapt.
Each situation is different, but the guiding philosophy stays the same. We do what we can to make sports better. Changes are still taking place all the time. The NFL made three rule changes just last week.
It’s okay to have traditions, but it’s also important to be openminded, recognize where things can be improved, and work hard to improve them. This idea goes far beyond the world of sports.
But, in the case of the NBA, there’s no reason why the season is 82 games long. It might be shortened in the coming years. There could also be a midseason tournament, a permanent play-in tournament for the playoffs, or even a group stage to start the playoffs.
Obviously, just because new rules are suggested doesn’t mean they are good ideas or changes that need to be implemented. One NBA rule proposal gaining a fair amount of traction would see the addition of a four-point line, something that started with the Globetrotters but was also adopted by the BIG3 league. I personally think it would be a bad idea.
However, potential changes deserve to be evaluated and taken seriously. We shouldn’t be afraid of them. I was initially opposed to a play-in to determine the final teams in the playoffs, but I was pleasantly surprised by the format the NBA decided to go with, which rewards an eighth-place team for finishing well above the next-closest franchise with an automatic playoff spot while still giving them an advantage if they do need to play their way into the field.
While this season has featured unprecedented challenges and won’t look or feel perfectly identical to seasons in the past, the NBA has still developed a way to give this year the conclusion it deserves. That doesn’t mean it’s any less of a season. The NBA has experienced bigger changes and still had titles that count.
Connor Groel is a writer with a Bachelor’s degree in sport management from the University of Texas at Austin. He also serves as editor of the Top Level Sports publication on Medium. His book, “Sports, Technology, and Madness,” is available now. You can follow Connor on Medium, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter, and view his archives at toplevelsports.net.
