The TBT and the Elam ending is an attempt to change basketball for the better and make games more like the playground game. The Elam ending is an advancement from the bore of NCAA fouling to get the ball back at the end of the game. However, I can make the Elam Ending much better and much more exiting.
In the best of playground basketball, teams play to a high number of field goals, often 15, and all field goals count the same. But what makes it really exiting and clutch is ‘win by two’ playground rule. This means that to win the game the losing team must have 13 field goals or less when the winning team reaches 15 field goals. This causes a lot of stress and excitement when the game is close. When your team is losing by one basket you know you must score so that the other team can not win the game on it’s next possession. I have played in games that go to 30 points before a win happens and those are the best games. This the playground equivalent to overtime in a normal whistle game.
How to do ‘win by two’ in Elam ending? Currently, in the Elam rules, once the time is up and the whistle blows to cause a dead ball situation, the winning number is calculated and the first team to reach that score is declared the winner of the game. Using the new rules, the way to derive the winning score would all stay the same. The difference would be that once a team reached that winning score there would be another factor to consider before that team is declared the winner. Is the losing team less than 4 points behind? If the answer is yes then the game continues. No winner will be declared until the winning team has more points than the Calculated Elam ending score and they are ahead of the losing team by more than 3 points. This ensures a team has to be ahead by more than one field goal to win the game.