I was recently reading this article written by veteran NBA columnist Steve Aschburner, longtime Wolves writer, and current SI.Com contributer, and frankly it confounded me.  Although Aschburner addresses a few important topics: Ticket Prices and Referee Accesibility, he mostly writes about trivialities that don't actually affect the game at all: Music played in arenas, the All-Star game, an Old-Timers Game (Why? WHY?), smiles, court-markings, suspensions, the D-League and Instant Replay.  I realize that some of the article was written with a tounge-in-cheek mentality, but why not write about some things that would actaully improve the NBA game.  Here is my list with a few major items and a few minor items:

MAJOR ITEMS

1. Timouts: There are just too damned many of them.  The teams get 8 timeouts per game (3 full and 1 20-second per half), and it seems that some coaches, Greg Popovich, have to use every single one of them.  I know that at 2 minutes left in a half, you lose one full timeout if unused, but this still leaves each team with 2 full and 1 20 second timeout in the last 2 minutes.  That is a total of 6 timeouts.  Watching the end of games has gotten to be ridiculous.  And I have a DVR. I would rather have a buffalo take a diarreah dump in my ear than have to watch the last 2 minutes of a close NBA game without a DVR.  The solution is simple: 2 timeouts per half, 1 in the last 2 minutes.  (If they want to keep a third "timout" which is used only to move the ball up the floor to the other side like they do now, that would be fine as long as there is no stoppage in the game.) I know that ad revenue has something to do with the amount of timeouts, but trust me, ratings and viewership would go up enough to justify less commercials if they just got rid of so many timeouts. 

2. Consistent Officiating on Basic Calls: To start things off, I think the best solution for the NBA would be to simply fire all exhisting Officials and train new officials on the actual rules of basketball, but that ain't happening.  That being said, I can imagine that officiating an NBA game is extremely difficult. Most people appreciate this. But what many people don't like is that the basic and fundamental rules of the game are being broken.  I know, this is going to seem very white of me, but they either need to change the rules on some basic calls, or start calling them the way the rules are written.  These rules are: palming, traveling, hand-checking. I can't tell you how many people tell me they can't watch the NBA anymore because all of the players travel all the time, palm the ball, and the refs are inconsistent with the hand-checking/physicality of the game. Are most of these people 50 and older white males? Yes.  But you know what NBA? That is a big group of men who used to love your game and would come back if you just cleaned up the fundamentals. If refs started calling travels, palms, and were consitent with the hand checks, most fans could put up with a few missed out of bounds calls, or some missed slaps.  Except Jazz Fan.  He will be pissed about any percieved slight.   

3. Too Many Teams: This one will never happen, because of the allegiance of the NBA (and the whole world) to the all-mightly dollar, but there should be about 4 fewer teams in the league.  This would improve the overall talent in the league by cutting 60 jobs and dispersing the 4-5 solid players from each team on to the remaining 26teams.  And I don't want to hear crying, because it isn't even hard to say which teams shoud be cut: Toronto, Charlotte, Memphis, and Oklahoma City.  And while you're at it, who likes the Bucks or the Kings? You could even take the LA Clippers and nobody but Billy Crystal would care. Cut em'. Cut em' all. 

MINOR ITEMS:

1. Flopping: I know, this is related to officiating, but there should be an EXTRA penalty (a fine, a techical) for flopping.  Just hire a guy at the league office who gets reports of flopping during a game and then have the league fine the players 10k for each case of obvious flopping.  The thing is EVERBODY KNOWS WHO THE FLOPPERS ARE.  Why don't the referees know? Derek Fisher, Manu Ginobili, Anderson Varejao, Raja Bell, Shane Battier, Andrew Bogut, Bruce Bowen, Richard Hamilton, Andres Nocioni, Sasha Vujacic, and the list goes on.  This is easy: first 3 flops, 10 grand each.  Next 3, 50k, next 3 100K each.  Flopping would go away really, quickly, and the game would be more enjoyable to watch. 

2. Gauranteed Contracts: Just do it like the NFL does it, Dodoes.  Give salary bonuses as the gauranteed part of the equation, and then have a cap figure that the team pays if the players no longer produce?  The way the contracts are now hurts the fans, the teams, and, in reality the players, as many talented guys have to go to Europe to get jobs because useless fat-assed sacks of crap like Jerome James continue to get paid for one good playoff series. 

3. Court Dimensions: I'm all for extending the 3 by a foot. The 3 point line has gotten to be too big of an advantage as you only need to shoot 33.3% on threes  to equal your point production on 50% field goal shooing inside the line. That just doesn't seem right.  I know the NBA three is a manly shot, but when you see a guy like Rashard Lewis make it look like a lay-up he shoots it so easily, maybe it's time to back the line up.  This would also improve mid-range play and open the court up.  I'm all for adjusting the sidelines by a foot as well.  All this garbage about guys stepping on the sidelines is the most frustrating crap to watch and kills the flow of NBA games.  Guys have gotten bigger and longer, and it is time the NBA court recognizes this. 

Ok.  That's I'll I've got. Any other things you'd like to see change?

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