A Case for Basketball's Penalty Box
I’m gonna start this with a quick story. The story itself is not super interesting, but it does help to get us where we’re going, so I’m gonna tell it. So I was texting with my buddy Will (a Lakers fan) about the recent news that Anthony Davis wants out of New Orleans. He and I were going back and forth about trade packages and other interesting things surrounding the story, such as how it baffles me that New Orleans has continued to fail in luring free agents and putting together a solid team around AD given that New Orleans is an all-caps GREAT city with a top-notch culture and lifestyle, which more than the actual trade is what makes things like this engaging and compelling. Basketball is a perfect sport, and more specifically, the NBA is a perfect league for a perfect sport that is capitalizing on an incredible age of media exposure to cement itself as a cultural cornerstone. A player like Davis requests a trade and we can have 1,246 different conversations about how that will affect basketball and we’re not even talking about actually playing basketball. That rocks. Though to be honest we could probably find better things to do with our time. But anyways we’re texting back and forth and get to a point where he says, “Man we moving to hockey if the Clippers hang a banner in Staples,” which is both a funny joke about the Clippers and a good example of how these sort of conversations can go from point A (Anthony Davis requesting a trade from the Pelicans) to point Q (the Clippers for some reason winning the NBA Finals). It also sparked in me an idea. A beautiful idea. An idea that is now the only thing I truly care about:
Basketball needs a penalty box!
During his tenure, Adam Silver has not been shy about making rule changes to make basketball more entertaining and dynamic. Changes to league rules over the past few years have allowed for the current boom of 3-pointers, high-speed fast breaks, and whatever bullshit it is that James Harden is doing to score 40 points a night. As athletes and fans have evolved, the league has evolved with them to produce an incredible entertainment event, night after night. But it can always be better, and introducing hockey’s penalty box to basketball is a perfect idea.
I would be remiss to introduce this idea without laying out some parameters for how this would work. I will try to do so generally, but with enough detail to present it as viable.
Under current rules, players are called for fouls for any number of reasons. There are personal fouls (these are very common, such as hitting a shooter on the arm), flagrant fouls (less common, think like when Draymond kicks someone in the balls), and technical fouls (averagely common, think like when Draymond tells someone that they are a bitch). (I’m going to use Dray as an example a lot here cause I just really feel like the penalty box is a place he would spend a lot of time.)* With technical fouls the opposing team gets to shoot a free throw and gains possession of the ball, and the offending player is at risk of ejection, with the second resulting in an automatic ejection, so we are going to leave those alone. With flagrant fouls there are two levels, 1 and 2, with level 2 being worse than level 1. A flagrant 2 foul is an automatic ejection so we are also going to leave those alone too. The penalty box will apply to flagrant 1 and certain personal fouls. I am not going to lay out each and every foul that should be included in the list of penalty box fouls because that is a lot of work to do for something that will not become a reality due to a. me not working for the NBA and b. this probably being a terrible idea, but I will provide a few examples of what this might look like because it will be fun.
*While we’re here, the first ballot Penalty Box Hall of Fame would be: Draymond, Ron Artest, Rasheed Wallace, Bill Laimbeer, and Karl Malone.
Example 1: Flagrant 1
When a player commits a flagrant 1 foul the opposing team will get possession to inbound the ball at the side out half court, and the offending player will spend 90 seconds of game time in the penalty box. This would give the offended team a power play to capitalize, while also giving the offending team a chance to hold their own. Think of the disappointed dad press conference comments from LeBron after Lance Stephenson shoves Westbrook in the back during a late game scuffle and the Lakers have to play the final possessions down a player and lose by 2. Or when Giannis hacks someone with his magnificently long arms and gets called for a flagrant 1, then 90 seconds later the Bucks are running a fast break as the power play expires and The Greek Freak comes trailing in at a full sprint from the box and thunder dunks on whichever parking attendant happens to be wearing a Suns jersey that day. This is the NBA content we need.
Example 2: Tripping
Tripping someone is, in most circumstances, technically a common foul, but is widely regarded in the basketball community as a “bitch move”. It deserves more than a personal foul but we aren’t going to toss someone from the game for it, making it a perfect penalty box foul. So imagine it’s game 2 the Western Conference Finals. It’s the 3rd quarter and LeBron steals the ball and starts heading down the floor when Draymond reaches his leg out and trips him in a very Draymond way where it very surely is on purpose but doesn’t really look like it is on purpose because Draymond is very good at that sort of thing. In the old rules, Dray would have been dealt a common foul, words would have been exchanged, Bron would do that thing where he acts like he isn’t a SuperHulk who can’t feel pain and struggles to get back up, and we would all move on. But not anymore. Draymond heads to the penalty box and this is the Lakers chance to capitalize over the next minute and a half and take a lead. Could this even the series? Do the Lakers have a chance? They inbound the ball and instead Lonzo turns it over twice and Steph and Klay hit a pair of 3’s a piece to go along with a Boogie fast break dunk for a 14-0 Warriors run. Such is life.
Example 3: Traveling
This one only applies to James Harden. Whenever he travels he has to go into the penalty box for the rest of the game.
So anyways now we share a vision of what it would look like to have a penalty box in the NBA. Would it be a good rule change? Almost certainly not. Would it be fun as hell? Almost certainly yes. Make it happen Adam Silver.
