Marc Stein of the New York Times reported on Thursday that the NBA will now require teams to submit official and accurate heights and ages for every player in camp. One imagines these official data points will replace the player-submitted claims in the NBA’s information database that feeds into everything else. Which means that in a couple weeks we’re going to find out officially that Klay Thompson is three inches taller than Draymond Green and Kevin Durant is officially taller than DeAndre Jordan.
Someone called the NBA height cops
We have that and more in Friday’s NBA newsletter.
Photo by Brock Williams-Smith/NBAE via Getty Images
The age thing seems legitimately needed after Buddy Hield aged up two years in one day recently. But I don’t know how teams expect to get accurate ages for the players while they are in training camp. I mean ... do players have to fill out I-9s? Do they need to bring their birth certificates? Normal employers can keep you from working until they have that proof of employment eligibility. Are NBA teams going to have to hold a player out if he can’t proof his age via official government documentation? Are we going to get a “DNP-HR”?
The demand for tape measure accurate height is more nebulous. Lying about your height is a long NBA tradition, available to 5’10 dudes who claim 6 feet and 7-footers who prefer to be listed a few inches smaller alike. What’s the purpose here? Is it for sorting play-by-play data, which often requires assumptions about who is playing what position in an odd lineup? Seriously, is Klay Thompson now going to be the center in Warriors’ death lineups? (Wait, are Alfonzo McKinnie and Kevon Looney now members of a Warriors’ death lineup?) Is Kevin Durant going to be the official center when he eventually lines up with DeAndre Jordan? Is Kevin Durant going to be the perennial first-team All-NBA center once he’s back from injury recovery?
The NBA is really leaning into this whole thing about being the basketball cops. First, tampering. Now, height. What next ... tanking? What, why are you laughing?
Experiment Time
The G League will do another fun basketball experiment on behalf of the NBA, reports ESPN’s Zach Lowe. This one: only one free throw will be shot for each trip to the line. If made, that shot will count for how many ever free throws the player would have gotten based on the foul. So you’re going to have some 3-point free throws. This rule will be thrown out in the final two minutes of the game and overtime. Lowe reports the G League believes this will save 6-8 minutes off of the average game.
This is an old Kevin Arnovitz favorite. It’s smart, as always, to experiment in the G League so that all of the unintended consequences can be discovered. Some that we would expect could show up: free throw percentage will go down (players collectively shoot better on second shots than first shots), players might get a bit more gassed more frequently due to a reduction in length of normal game pauses, intentional fouls become a little more high stakes and thus attractive for a team that’s behind, and it could change the calculus on the attractiveness of drawing 3-point fouls given the increased potential for coming up empty from the line.
I’m glad the NBA takes this type of experimentation seriously.
Links
Game 1 of the WNBA Finals is Sunday at 3 p.m. ET (ESPN2). Sun at Mystics. Best of five. Should be a great series.
Alex Wong with a lovely piece on new Raptor Matt Thomas’ journey to the NBA. Matt’s mom is a real damn hero.
It seems like the internet convulsed in debate because someone, somewhere ranked Stephen Curry ahead of Kobe Bryant on an all-time list. The lesson here is a lesson I’ve been sharing gratis for time immemorial: do not debate about Kobe Bryant’s basketball legacy on the internet. Nothing good can come from it.
Deandre Ayton, who hails from the Bahamas, has a Bahamian inspired colorway with proceeds going to hurricane relief.
Be excellent to each other.
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