First to 7: New Zealand NBL’s new Elam Ending-like OT

By ALAN WALLS

Welcome to the 11th edition of The International Basketball Opinion, the world’s newest and only blog specifically dedicated to international basketball news, business and current events.

Ladies and gentlemen, professional basketball is back… in New Zealand of all places. And with a novel change to the way it will play overtime.

Amid the country’s reopening after passing the Coronavirus scare with flying colors, the NZ National Basketball League will tip off June 23 with an abbreviated 56-game, six-week, seven-team season.

Games will be played in a doubleheader format with all games taking place at the Trusts Arena in Auckland and without fans, at least initially.

Taking a page each out of the 64-team, $2 million winner-take-all The Basketball Tournament’s fourth-quarter Elam Ending and the 2019 NBA All Star Game, the NZNBL has come up with an innovative way it will decide overtime games.

This is not your father’s overtime. They are marketing it as the “First to 7.” 

Necessity is the mother of all invention, or in this case implementation. Being that the games will be played back-to-back, for television scheduling purposes the league cannot afford to risk games going into double overtime. The games must last no longer than one OT period.

Here is how it will work, in a nutshell:

1. First team to score seven points wins.
2. No clock.

Click here for the full set of OT rules that the NZNBL will use.

However… if the league needs to keep games from running long and it has a novel idea it wants to market to increase interest in the league, why not implement it at the end of the game (final four or five minutes)?

Statistics show that only about 6% of NBA games go into overtime. If that is applied to the 56 NZNBL games, only three (3.36) will go to overtime.

Though "First to 7" is catchy, why spend time and resources marketing something that is only going to happen three or four times, if that?

If the NZNBL really wants to do something radical and attention-getting by being the first and only pro league in the world to institute it (global media interest), then using the Elam Ending in ALL 56 games is the way to go. It is the same thing basically as their OT deal, just at the end of the 4th quarter.

The actual Elam Ending is with 8 points, so it could be marketed as the "Race to 8." Imagine the excitement among the fans knowing that it will be applied to all games! I am sure many new local as well as global fans will be drawn to watch the games on TV (they will be broadcast internationally via pay-per-view, $14.95) just to see the new and exciting endings. Remember, no fans allowed in person.

All games would end sooner than normal as we all know how long it can take to play the last five minutes of a professional game. No more intentional fouls followed by endless trips to the FT line, as well as numerous timeouts just to stop the clock.

Role of legal wagering?

One major aspect of professional sports now days that might have something to say about the possible eventual implementation of the Elam Ending, whether it be in the 4th quarter of all games or just in OT, is that of legal sports gambling.

It will change how odds are set and how in-game wagering is done at the end of the game or in OT when the action will not stop for enough time to set and place bets.

I think the legal gaming companies will have a lot to say regarding the Elam Ending’s implementation on a large scale, especially in the NBA. Money talks…

Back in March Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey stated on Fox Sports’ “First Things First” that he thinks the Elam Ending will be adopted by the NBA for overtime in “the next few years.”

The NBA should have a watchful eye on the NZNBL this season, at least its overtime games.

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Author Alan Walls is an American international basketball coach and administrator with over 25 years of experience on the youth, high school, NCAA, professional and national team levels in 16 countries and on five continents. Walls has worked with the national federations of Turkey, Romania, Palestine, Mongolia, Kenya and El Salvador as well as coached or conducted camps and clinics throughout the United States – including his native Hawai’i – Mexico, Argentina, China, Hong Kong and Israel. Walls is the founder and General-Secretary of the United Nations of Basketball (2020 launch).