rules Archives - Page 4 of 9

What does it mean to be a two possession game?

Dear Sports Fan,

I was watching a playoff basketball game last night and I heard the announcers talking about the game becoming a “two possession” game if someone made a free throw. It was clearly important but I’m not sure what it means. Is it about how much time is left? Or the score? What does it mean to be a two possession game? And why is it important?

Thanks,
Maria

Dear Maria,

A two possession game is a game in which one team is winning by enough points that the team that is trailing cannot catch up with a single score. The term is usually used in basketball and football, two games where scoring can be done in different increments. The number of possessions needed to tie the game is a simple mathematical equation based on how scoring works in each sport.

In football, the highest number of points that a team can score at a time is eight which they could achieve by scoring a touchdown followed by a two point conversion. A football game is said to be a “one possession” game if the team leading is leading by eight or fewer points. In basketball, the most points a team can score in one trip down the court is actually four points (a player is fouled while shooting a three point shot but still makes the basket; they are given the three points and get one chance at the free throw line to add a single point to their total) but this is so rare and so easy to prevent (just don’t foul a player taking a three point shot) that it’s generally discarded from the conversation. Instead, in basketball, a single possession game is generally thought of as one in which the team trailing is losing by three points or fewer. If you want more information (and a handy chart) on how scoring works across different sports, check out our post on the topic here. A two possession game in basketball is one in which a team is trailing by three to six points. Down by seven points? That’s a three possession game. 10, 11, or 12 would be a four possession game. Football follows the same pattern by eights. A zero to eight point deficit is a one possession game, nine to 16 is a two possession game, 17-24 is a three possession game, and so on.

The importance of whether a game is a one, two, or three possession game is tactical. While you were wrong in thinking that the term was based on the amount of time left, you were on to something. People usually talk about how many possessions apart the teams are only close to the end of the game, and end of game tactics are very much about the combination of score and time. A trailing team’s players, coaches, and fans are constantly doing a mental calculation: “how far behind are we and how much time do we have left to catch up?” One very useful short-hand to that mental math is to express both sides of the equation in terms of possessions — “how many possessions do we need to tie the game and how many possessions might there be time for?”

The end of basketball games is often defined by one team intentionally fouling the other. This topic is worth a blog post of its own, but the short story for why they do this is that a foul stops the clock. While fouling will give the other team an easy opportunity to get up to two points by successfully shooting free throws, it also extends the game by creating time for more possessions with the ball, during which the trailing team could score two or three points. What you probably saw was a player from the team that had the lead shooting a free throw that was intentionally given up by the trailing team. If that player had missed, the trailing team could have taken the ball and tied the game on that possession, whit a single shot. If the player made the free throw, it would have pushed the difference between the teams from three to four points, and meant that the trailing team would have needed to get the ball, score, and then either stop the other team from scoring or intentionally foul again, before having a chance to tie the game. The difference between a one possession game and a two possession game is a big deal.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

How does it work in baseball when a game is called part of the way through?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why did the Red Sox game on Marathon Monday stop early? Isn’t that unfair? Who gets to choose when they’re stopping? How does it work in baseball when a game is called part of the way through?

Thanks,
Bobbie

Dear Bobbie,

It’s true, the game on Patriots’ Day in Boston between the Red Sox and the Baltimore Orioles ended in less than the full nine innings. It was stopped by the umpire in the middle of the seventh inning because of rain. The game was not restarted, nor will it be finished at a later date. In baseball, it’s okay to have a game that’s less than nine innings and its result counts towards the final standings just as much as if it had been played all the way through. When this happens, it’s usually because of weather, but there are other permissible reasons. This may seem weird to you but it’s all part of baseball’s unique structure and culture.

If you want to understand the exact rules that govern when and why a baseball game can be stopped, your first stop might be the official rules of the game. The problem with this is that these rules appear to have been written by a mixture of lawyers and spies. You need an expensive education and a one-time pad just to make sense of them. Here’s an example:

No game called because of a curfew (Rule 4.12(a)(1)), weather (Rule 4.12(a)(5)), a time limit (Rule 4.12(a)(2)) or with a tied score (Rule 4.12(a)(6)) shall be a suspended game unless it has progressed far enough to have been a regulation game pursuant to Rule 4.10(c). A game called pursuant to Rules 4.12(a)(3) or 4.12(a)(4) shall be a suspended game at any time after it starts.

For mere mortals like us, it’s probably enough to know a simplified version of these rules. This information will serve 95% of time.

Once the game starts, the only person who gets to choose if and when to stop the game is the head umpire.
A game can be stopped temporarily, usually for rain, and can be restarted once the conditions allow play again.
If a game has to be stopped for the day, it is declared a “called” game and this is when the mildly complicated stuff starts.
If a game is called before four and a half innings are played, the game is declared not to have existed at all and the teams need to reschedule it and start from the beginning. All of the statistics accumulated in the game are stricken from the record. Let’s take a minute to think about how totally insane that would feel as a player. You’re having a great game — the best of your life. You’ve got two home runs in the first three innings. Then it starts raining and they’re just gone. Of course, a bad game of fielding errors could just as easily be wiped from the books, so maybe it works out. Rany Jazayerli has a great article about this in Baseball Prospectus. He notes that Roger Maris, who held the single season home run record with 61 for decades, actually would have had 62 but for one being erased in this way.
If a game has reached four and a half inning and the home team is winning (and therefore nothing that happens in the bottom of the fifth inning, when the home team is up to bat, could change the outcome,) the game is over and it counts as a regulation game.
If a game has reached the four and a half inning mark and it is tied, the game will become a suspended game. It must be rescheduled and when play starts, it will pick up right where the two teams left off, although some player substitutions are allowed.

Weather is by far the most common reason for calling a game, but the rules allow for light or other technical malfunctions, “a curfew imposed by law” and the mysterious “a time limit permissible by league rules.” As far as I can tell, the rules that the rules are referring to here, do not exist.

With all the money and competitive importance involved in professional sports today, these rules may seem archaic or even irresponsibly lighthearted. They seem to suggest that the outcome of a game is not so important, that once the game is half through, that’s enough to call it done. This ignores a thousand late-inning comebacks. The thing is, baseball is a little bit archaic and that’s part of its nostalgic charm. It is more relaxed than other sports. The length of the regular season (162 games) means that each game actually does mean less. Compared to an NFL football season of 16 games, each baseball game is only 1/16 as important as each NFL football game. Part of what makes baseball fun to follow is its every-day, low-key rhythm. Being calm enough about a sport to accept a loss even though you were only down by one run in the fifth inning when it started to rain is emblematic of what baseball fans love about their sport.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

What is traveling in basketball?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is traveling in basketball? Can you explain the traveling rule? I know it has something to do with a player walking instead of dribbling but I don’t quite understand how it works.

Thanks,
Traci

Dear Traci,

Like you said, traveling is a rule in basketball that dictates how a player can move with the ball. A traveling violation is called when a player moves in an improper way. When this happens, a ref blows his or her whistle and the ball is given to the team that had been defending. Beyond this, I have to admit that I’m probably about as unclear as you are. Traveling has officially flummoxed me! It’s a strange feeling. Usually, when I get a question, I have a pretty good idea of how to answer it. Other times, I have to dig into the internet and do some research before I can come up with an answer. Even with the hardest questions, it’s rare for me to be stumped, even after reading up on a subject. Traveling is just one of those semi-unfathomable mysteries in life, like the nature of black holes or why breakfast is so satisfying when eaten at non-traditional times. Still, your question deserves an answer, so I’ll do my best.

From an overly simplified vantage point, traveling is easy to understand. Imagine teaching a child to play basketball. The first thing you establish would probably be the goal of the game — to get the ball through the basket in a top-down direction. Great! The kid gets it, grabs the ball, runs down the court and tries to score. “No, no” you might say, “you can’t just run with the ball, it’s not like football.” Then you’d explain the second most obvious rule in basketball — that you have to bounce the ball on the floor while moving with it. Traveling is the name given to a violation of this second rule. In principle, it’s simple. In reality, it’s complicated. I think the best way to delve into the complications is in the form of a question and answer session.

Q: Does it matter how many steps you take between bounces while you’re dribbling?
A: No! As long as you are dribbling, you can pretty much do whatever you want — you can take giant tall dribbles with lots of steps between bounces or tiny small ones.

Q: Can you start dribbling, stop, and then start again?
A: No! Once a player starts dribbling with the ball, she has to keep dribbling to keep moving. If she stops, another player on either team (or the rim) has to touch the ball before she can start dribbling again.

Q: Do you have to start dribbling right away, once you get the ball?
A: No! If a player gets the ball and comes to a stop (or maybe he was already standing still) without dribbling, he can stand still with the ball without dribbling. He can even move around a little as long as one foot remains still on the ground. This foot is called the “pivot foot.”

Q: What’s the deal with squirming around on the ground? I’ve seen that sometimes called traveling.
A: You’re right! If a player is on the ground, she may not “gain an advantage” by sliding while holding onto the ball.

Q: Okay, got it. This doesn’t seem so complicated. So, how many steps can a player take without dribbling?
A: Ah. There’s the rub. I don’t really know. The traditional, basketball-folk story has been that only two steps were allowed. In recent years though, particularly in the NBA (all our discussion today has been about NBA rules, although NCAA rules are not so different) this has obviously not been the case. Some of this is due to a culture of leniency when it comes to how referees enforce the traveling rules. Perhaps the league instructed them to err on the side of allowing play to continue undisturbed unless the traveling violation were particularly offensive. That’s possible. But it’s also true that the rule seems to almost intentionally obfuscate the issue. Instead of simply talking about steps, the rule uses the word “counts.” For example, “A player who receives the ball while he is progressing or upon completion of a dribble, may use a two-count rhythm in coming to a stop, passing or shooting the ball.” It then goes on, in great and almost incomprehensible detail to try to define what counts as a “count.” Some of the sub-definitions refer to the number of steps a player can take, some don’t. It’s almost as if the NBA wanted to make the traveling rule so complicated that fans (and maybe even players) would simply have to take the referees word as the truth.

Q: Hmm. So when you watch a basketball game, you really have no idea when traveling is going to be called?
A: No — that’s the funny thing. I generally do know when traveling is and isn’t going to be called. It’s as if, over the hundreds of hours I’ve spent watching basketball, I’ve developed an instinct for traveling as defined by NBA refs collective judgement. I know it when I see it (most of the time) but I can’t properly explain it. This is frustrating to me because it goes against my theory that with proper explanation, non-sports fans would be able to understand and enjoy sports much more than they do today.

Q: So what do I do now? How can I learn more about traveling?
A: Well, I guess the best thing to do is to understand the basic principles, which I hope this blog post has helped with, and then understand that even the most die-hard basketball fans probably don’t actually understand much more than that. Sometimes just knowing that other people don’t know either is all you need to know. You know? Armed with that understanding, you should feel free to watch lots of basketball and build your own sense of what should and shouldn’t be a travel. There are also lots of YouTube compilations of basketball plays which people think should have been called travels but weren’t. Here’s one good one.

Thanks for the questions,
Ezra

Does a baseball team have to use a DH or designated hitter in an American League game?

Dear Sports Fan,

Does a baseball team have to use a DH or designated hitter in an American League game? What if they have a pitcher who is really good at hitting?

Thanks,
Charlie

Dear Charlie,

No! And thanks so much for your question because I had no idea that this was true before I researched the topic to answer it. Any team that would prefer to have their pitcher bat is allowed to do that, but by doing so, they must decline the option to have a designated hitter for that entire game. For people who are not totally familiar with baseball, let’s do a little background before explaining this surprising freedom within the rules.

A designated hitter is a player who hits but does not play in the field. It’s one of the strangest rules in sports because it has such an important impact on the game and yet it is used in only half the Major League Baseball games each season. The American League plays with a designated hitter. The National League does not. It’s perhaps the most important quirk that stems from a history as independent leagues and not just two halves of the same league. So, in games between two National League teams, the pitchers take their turn hitting, just like the rest of their teammates. In games between two American League teams, the pitchers concentrate just on hitting and let a designated hitter take their spot in the batting order, once every nine times around. In interleague play or games with one National League and one American League team, where the game is played matters. The team at home gets to use their rules while the away team adapts.

The advantages of having using a DH are clear. Pitching is a very specialized skill. So is batting. If you are able to use two separate players to fill these specialized needs, you’re more likely to get high-quality performance in both realms. In the National League, where pitchers have to hit, they’re usually the worst hitters on the team. Having a pitcher at bat one out of every nine times a team gets to hit translates over the long run into a less high scoring and less highly skilled game. I have to say though, the DH rule has always bothered me a little. I feel like it’s somehow cheating to let players play only half the game — either just defense or just offense. Plus, I thought, it would really do a disservice to a player who was so abundantly talented that he could excel in both phases.

Your question prompted me to dig deeper into the rulebook and discover something wonderful. The DH is entirely voluntary! Teams don’t have to use a designated hitter. Before the game, they can simply declare that their pitcher is going to hit and then play the game that way. What a power move! I imagine a team doing this to send the message to their opponent, “we don’t need the silly DH rule. We can beat you without it!” In reality though, this almost never happens, and when it does, it’s sometimes an accident. For instance, in 2009, then Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon mistakenly listed two players as playing third base and in correcting the error, was forced to play the game without a DH.

Other times, teams make a substitution during the game that loses them their DH rights. This is easily understandable. Imagine a situation where the DH is the only other player on the team that can play a position — say catcher, since that’s a very unique position. Part of the way through the game, the starting catcher gets injured and so the player who was playing DH needs to step into that role. Once the DH plays in the field, his team loses DH privileges and has to use their pitcher as a hitter as well.

One thing a team cannot do (but which would be a nice trick if it were allowed) is to start a player in the DH spot who they never intend to have bat — for example, a starting pitcher who is on a rest day. That way, the first time the DH came up to bat, the team’s manager would be able to substitute for the perfect pinch hitter — a fast contact hitter in some situations or a hulking power hitter in others. This tactic was thought of and used by former Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver before being outlawed in 1980 by the so-called Phantom DH rule.

Whether by accident or on purpose, a team declining or losing their ability to use a designated hitter is one of those rare baseball oddities that makes the sport so rewarding to follow.

Thanks for your question,
Ezra Fischer

What's a franchise tag?

Dear Sports Fan,

What’s a franchise tag?

Thanks,
Aaron

Dear Aaron,

A franchise tag is a contractual technicality National Football League (NFL) teams can use in negotiating with one of their players who is going to become an unrestricted free agent. Of all the major American sports leagues, the NFL is the one where the power is most unevenly shifted towards the teams and against the players. The franchise tag, although it does have some benefit for a player who receives one, is an expression of the power teams have, even over star players.

Players in the NFL can sign contracts with teams for one or more than one year. The best players often sign longer contracts than their coworkers. Three or four years is fairly ordinary for these players. At the end of every contract, a player becomes either a restricted or an unrestricted free agent based on the small print in their original contract and league rules. A restricted free agent is allowed to negotiate with other teams, but if they receive an offer from another team, their current team is allowed to match it. If the first team matches the offer of the second, the player stays on his current team. It’s not up to him. If the team chooses not to match the other team’s offer, the player will go play for the new team but his original team receives some compensation for his loss from his new team – usually in the form of a draft pick in an upcoming draft. Unrestricted free agents don’t need to deal with any of this complication. They are free to negotiate with all the NFL teams on the open market. If another team offers them a higher salary or is more attractive for some other reason, they can go play for that team. The choice is 100% the player’s and their original team gets nothing in return.

The easiest way of thinking about the franchise tag is that it’s something each NFL team can do place restrictions on one of their unrestricted free agents each year. This seems unfair, doesn’t it? Well, I suppose it’s not because these rules were collectively bargained for in negotiations between the NFL and the Players Association, but I’m sure it still feels unfair to a player whose free agency is taken away from him in this way. When a player receives a franchise tag (or “is franchised”) he receives a set salary based on the position he plays and the type of franchise tag his team placed on him.

There are three types of franchise tags:

Exclusive – This is the most restrictive form of a franchise tag. When a team uses an exclusive franchise tag on a player, they have effectively resigned him for one year at quite a high salary. An exclusive franchise player gets either the average salary of the top five players at his position or a 20% raise over his salary last season, whichever is bigger.
Non-Exclusive – This is the most common form of franchise tag. A non-exclusive franchise tag restricts a player very much like being a restricted free agent. He is free to sign an offer sheet from another team but if his team does not match the offer, it gets two first round draft picks from the other team. That’s a high price to pay for even a great player. If the player stays on his original team, he gets the same deal as described above in the exclusive section.
Transition – This type of franchising is not really used anymore. It was once a way of restricting a player’s movement without even guaranteeing him a salary but that unfairness has been rectified. It’s still a little cheaper for a team to use a transition tag but if another team signs the player, the first team receives no compensation.

Teams don’t need to use a franchise tag every year. In fact, only a handful of teams use one each year. They are, after all, pretty expensive since the team is then responsible for paying one of their players at a rate commensurate with the top players at his position. Teams can tag a player as a franchise player for a second or even third year but it gets more and more expensive each year. Not only do those 20% raises add up but after the second time, the team is required to provide a 44% raise instead of a 20% one! The one counter-intuitive loophole to this is when a team has the best player at a relatively cheap position, like kicker. In this case, the best player may be able to get a significantly higher salary on the open market than the other top players at his positions. Paying that player the average of his and the next four players at his position might be a lot cheaper than just paying him what he’s worth.

Why do teams use franchise tags? Aside from the rare case when it’s cheaper, primarily, it’s a negotiating tool with a player the team would like to hold on to. If the two sides are having trouble negotiating a long-term deal, the team can use the franchise tag as a way of forcing the player’s hand (see, you’re not going anywhere, now let’s figure out how to make a long-term deal.) That’s the best case scenario. In the most cynical view, it could be used by a team as a way of holding on to an important player without committing to him in the long-term. The risk for a player is that if he gets hurt during a year when he’s on a one-year franchised player deal, he may not be able to command as high a salary in as long-term of a deal as he once was. In a worst-case scenario, a franchised player could suffer a career ending injury and never have a chance to sign the long-term deal they thought they would be able to get.

Thanks for your question,
Ezra Fischer

What does advantage mean in soccer?

Dear Sports Fan,

What does advantage mean in soccer? I hear things like “the referee is playing advantage” or “has called advantage” but I don’t know what that means.

Thanks,
Gilbert

Dear Gilbert,

Soccer refs are the most powerful officials in any sport. Many important elements of the game, including the official game clock, are completely at the discretion of the ref. Advantage is one of those powerful elements of responsibility that require discretion on the part of the ref. When a foul is committed, the ref can decide to stop the game immediately or allow the game to continue interrupted if doing so would be better for the team that has just been fouled than stopping the game and giving them a free kick. This makes sense but it does ask a lot from the referee. He or she has to make a snap decision after each foul. Which team has the ball? If it’s the team that just got fouled, are they on the attack? How good of a chance do they have to score? Where was the foul committed? Would a free kick from that spot be likely to create a good scoring chance? How good of a scoring chance would it be? Would the team that just got fouled have a better chance to score by letting play continue or by stopping it and giving them a free kick? All of that calculation must be done in an instant. If the ref decides to call the foul, he will blow his whistle and stop the game. If not, she will straighten her arms out in front of her in what I would call a robot-giving-a-hug position to signal that there was a foul but the teams should continue to play. To add to the complexity of the decision, a good ref will also take into consideration whether or not the foul was worth giving a yellow or red card for and the general level of hostility between the two teams. If the ref decides to discipline the offending player with a card, he can still call advantage but must give the player the card as soon as the next time play stops. If a game is getting out of hand though, and the foul was a rough one, a ref may decide to stop the game and give the card immediately to avoid escalating violence.

Soccer is not the only sport that cooks the idea of advantage into their rules. Ice hockey has what they call a delayed penalty rule. Fouls are not called against a team until they gain control of the puck. This way, a team that is about to be advantaged by a foul call can keep trying to score until they lose control of the puck. This is why, when there is a delayed foul call coming, the team with the puck will quickly try to sub their goalie for another attacking player. They can’t be scored against (unless they make the terrible mistake of passing the puck back into their own net) because as soon as the other team touches the puck, play will be stopped and a penalty will be called. In American football, most penalties are announced after a play is over. A team that has been fouled has the choice of whether to accept the penalty or decline it and allow the result of the play to stand. In other words, a team that scores a touchdown despite being fouled does not have to wipe the touchdown off the scoreboard and take the smaller advantage of a five yard penalty.

All three of the rules help reduce the chances of a player intentionally fouling another to prevent her or her team from scoring. If a player were able to immediately nullify the play by committing even the most minor infraction, intentional fouls would happen all the time in these sports. Advantage is soccer’s best attempt to provide the maximum possible deterrent against fouling, whether that’s by blowing a whistle to stop the game or allowing the game to continue uninterrupted.

Thanks for reading,
Ezra Fischer

How does scoring work in golf?

Dear Sports Fan,

How does scoring work in golf?

Thanks,
Ian

Dear Ian,

Scoring in golf is dead simple but that fact is obscured by the unnecessarily complicated language that golf uses to talk about scoring. It’s not all bad though, golf’s language is actually pretty enjoyable and easy to learn. Plus, the way that golf thinks about scoring expresses something about the essence of the sport which is useful to understand. We’ll run through how the scoring works and then explain how to talk about golf scores.

In any golf competition, the player who gets the ball into the hole in fewer hits, wins. It’s that simple! Whether you’re talking about a single hole, an 18-hole round, or a tournament which is usually four rounds of 18 holes each, the player who can complete play using the fewest number of strokes is the winner. Things can get more complicated with various team formats, many of which I explained in my post about the Ryder Cup, but the concept is always the same — use the fewest swings possible.

By now you might be wondering why, if the scoring concepts are so simple, the words used to talk about the score is so complicated. When you watch golf on TV or get into a conversation with golfers, you hear a lot of strange words like “par,” “birdie,” “eagle,” and “bogie.” Huh? Here’s the deal. Three concepts will make all of those vocabulary words make sense.

Every golf hole and course are unique and of varying difficulty.
Golf is designed to work equally well as a competitive sport played against other golfers and a puzzle played individually.
No more than four players can play on a single hole simultaneously, so in any large competition, play is staggered across several hours. Despite this, both for the golfers and for fans, a way of expressing the standings at any moment is needed.

Golf’s solution is to express score in a relative way. Every hole on every course is given a number of strokes that the designers of the course think that an excellent golfer should be able to complete the hole in. That number is called par and is generally from three to five strokes. Instead of saying that a golfer used four hits to successfully complete a hole, her score is expressed relative to par. Here’s where the vocab words come in:

Par – Derived from the latin word meaning “equal,” par means that a golfer finished a hole in the number of strokes the course designers expected him to.
Birdie – A birdie is finishing a hole in one fewer stroke than expected.
Eagle – Once birdie was established as the term for one better than par, golf took off on the bird metaphors in that direction. An eagle is two shots better than par.
Albatross – An albatross, as you might have guessed, is three shots better than par. It’s very, very unusual.
Bogey – A bogey is the opposite of a birdie. A player who has shot a bogey has taken one more stroke than par to complete a hole. There are no separate words as players use more and more strokes to finish a hole, the way to express it is by adding a modifier before the word bogey. Two strokes worse than par is a double-bogey, three a triple-bogey, four a quadruple-bogey, and five a dear sports fan special. Just joking, I guess you’d call that a quintuple bogey…

The purpose of this is not to confuse beginners! Think back to our three principles of golf. Expressing scores relative to an ideal, almost platonic score that’s set for each hole and course is a remarkably effective way of making golf an exciting challenge even if played alone. Without needing to compare your score to a competitor’s, you can judge how well you’re doing. Shoot a birdie? Celebrate! Hit a double-bogey, cry a single tear and move on. If scores were simply expressed in an absolute way — five shots for a particular hole — there would be no way for a solitary golfer to know if she did well or poorly. As a bonus, by setting a par particular to each course, a golfer can move from course to course and still compare his play to previous rounds on other golf courses. Sure, the course he played today may have been more difficult than the one he played on a week ago, but if its par was set correctly, it was higher. Shooting par should be equally difficult on every course in the world.

The other element of genius to the relative approach to scoring is that it doesn’t matter where a golfer is on a course, you can always create a leaderboard by using their scores relative to par. Golfer A who has finished all 18 holes of a round and completed them in two shots more than par has a score of +2 or two over par. Golfer B who is halfway through the course and has used one fewer shot than expected so far has shot one under par or -1. Golfer C who just played the first hole and completed it in the expected number of strokes is currently at par or 0. You can line these golfers up easily to see who is winning at the moment.

Golfer B — -1
Golfer C — 0
Golfer A — +2

Golfers B and C are still playing and can improve their score or mess up and make it worse while Golfer A is done and can do nothing but wait and watch but by using relative scoring, we can rank them at any moment of the day to see who is winning.

Hopefully this all makes sense out of the madness,
Ezra Fischer

How does scoring work across sports?

Understanding how scoring works is one on the fundamental elements of beginning to understand a sport. I’ve written in the past about how scoring works in football and bowling and I will certainly get to other sports in the near future.

For today, I’ve created a simple chart that you can use as a reference as you watch different sports and wonder what types of scores are or aren’t possible.

A few things that may jump out at you as you read the chart.

Football has by far the most varied and complex set of scoring options. It’s also the only sport where a team cannot score a single point. The one point extra point is only possible in conjunction with a six point touchdown.
Hockey and soccer, the two lowest scoring sports, are also the only two where scoring more than a single goal at one time is impossible.
While the mechanism for scoring a point in baseball is solitary (a player runs around the bases and touches home plate without being caught out by the defensive team, it is possible to score one, two, three, or four runs at one time.
Football and basketball both use the term “field goal” but in football it refers to kicking the ball through the uprights while in basketball it’s simply the official phrase for tossing the ball through the basket. It’s possible for both field goals to be worth three points to the team making them but in basketball a two point field goal is also ordinary.
In basketball, a field goal plus a free throw is popularly called an “and one.”

Let me know if this is useful and what other sports you’d like to see added to the chart!

What is a power play in hockey?

Dear Sports Fan,

What is a power play in hockey?

Thanks,
Deborah

Dear Deborah,

Hockey has one of the more innovative ways of penalizing a player and a team for committing a foul. When a player commits a foul, a ref raises his arm, and as soon as a member of the player’s team gets control of the puck, the ref blows a whistle to stop play. The offending player is then escorted to a small, isolated compartment on the side of the rink opposite from where the teams sit, called the penalty box. Depending on the nature of the foul, he must remain there for some time, usually two or five minutes, or potentially until the other team scores a goal. While she is in the box, her team must play without her and they don’t get to simply replace her. They have to play shorthanded or “down a man,” which usually means they have four players plus a goalie against the other team’s five players plus a goalie. On rare occasions, one team may play with four players plus a goalie versus the other team’s three. Five on three is also possible, but the rules won’t allow things to get any more lopsided than that. The team that is has more players on the rink has a power play.

Power plays are extremely important in hockey because it is easier to score during one than in the normal course of “full strength” play. During a power play, the team with the extra player is often able to keep possession of the puck in their offensive zone and pass amongst themselves until they are able to get a good shot on goal. This is much more difficult without having the man advantage. Teams also have special combinations of players who they play during a power play. These units are, intuitively, called power play units. They’re usually made up of the best three offensive forwards on the team and the best two offensive defensemen although it’s not uncommon for a team to play with four forwards and one defenseman while they are on the power play. If a team choses to do this, one forward plays in the position a defenseman would normally be, up near the blue line that marks the dividing line between the offensive zone and the neutral zone. This gives the team more scoring punch on their power play unit but may also leave them vulnerable to a counter-attack.

20% is generally considered to be the dividing line between a good and a very good power play unit. A team that scores on more than 20% of their power play attempts is an extraordinarily good team with the man advantage. There are currently eight of the 30 NHL teams whose power play percentages are above 20%. Most of the rest of the teams range between 15% and 20% although there are three woeful teams that average a goal on less than 15% of their power play attempts. It’s no coincidence that two of these three teams have the two worst records in the league. It’s important to be good at converting power play attempts into goals.

When hockey games are at their most exciting and the stakes are at their highest, power plays begin to loom very large in fans’ minds. If your team is trailing, you hope desperately to be awarded a power play. If your team is winning, you just want the players on your team to play clean hockey and stay out of the penalty box. Once a penalty has been called, fans are launched into an even higher state of nervousness. If your team is the one with the power play, you barely make a sound for two minutes, except to scream pleadingly for a goal. If your team is the one that is shorthanded and killing the penalty off, then you just don’t breath until your team clears the puck away from their goal.

Power plays are wonderful theater and they’re also a great way to discourage foul play. I don’t know of many sports other than hockey that uses this type of deterrence (soccer has a similar rule for players who get red cards, but their banishment is permanent. I think water polo and possibly lacrosse have similar rules but with so many more players playing, the loss of one is less impactful) but I think more sports should adopt it. I recommended that football look into it during my epic series of articles on how to fix football’s brain injury problem. Until then, we’ll just keep enjoying it in hockey!

Hope this helps,
Ezra Fischer

What is a buzzer beater?

Dear Sports Fan,

What exactly is a buzzer beater? I know it’s a last second shot, but how last second does it have to be? And is it only in basketball? Why?

Thanks,
Wesley

Dear Wesley,

Nothing reminds people that sports are a constructed universe more than the clock that counts inexorably towards the end of a game. In most timed sports, like basketball, football, and hockey, this clock is present in the arena and on television screens throughout the entire game. In soccer, the official time is kept only by the referee, and in untimed sports like tennis and basketball, time takes a back seat to sets, games, or innings. Each sport that has a clock deals with what happens when the clock runs out a little differently. Hockey rules simply that when the clock hits zero at the end of a period or game, the action ends. If the puck is an inch from crossing the goal-line when the clock hits zero, there is no goal. As befits football’s nature as a set of successive plays, football rules dictate that time only matters at the start and end of plays. If there is a second on the clock, that is enough time for another play. If there is no time at the end of a play, (with an exception for penalties) there will be no next play. The clock hitting zero during a play makes no difference to the result of that play whatsoever. Basketball has a different way of deciding what happens when a clock hits zero.

There are two clocks in basketball: the game clock and the shot clock. The game clock starts at 12 minutes for each National Basketball Association (NBA) quarter or at 20 minutes for each college basketball half. The shot clock starts at 24 seconds in the NBA and 35 in college and resets each time possession of the ball switches from one team to another or if a shot hits the rim. The shot clock was introduced in the NBA in 1954 in order to force teams to shoot the ball more frequently. Basketball wants shots! As part of the shot clock rule, the NBA decided that instead of requiring a shot to go in or hit the rim before the 24 second clock hit zero, they would enforce it from the moment the ball left a player’s hand. Once the ball is in the air, flying towards the hoop, time is effectively no longer an issue. Basketball teams have 24 seconds (or 35 in college) to shoot the ball, not to make a basket or hit the rim.

This is a natural rule for the shot clock. After all, the shot clock was not put in place to stop play every 24 or 35 seconds, it was intended to create a fast-moving, offensive, and continuous game. When the same logic is applied to the game clock, it’s a little bit more jarring. When applied to the game clock, it means that a ball, flying through the air, after the clock hits zero, is still in play as long as the player who shot it let go before time expired. This is the essence of a buzzer beater! It’s a shot that continues after the game clock has hit zero.

There are, as you might expect, a few wrinkles to how this term is used. First, although a buzzer sounds whenever a shot clock or game clock hits zero (thus the “buzzer” moniker), people almost always use the term to refer to the game clock hitting zero at the end of the fourth quarter. Second, although buzzer beater literally should be a shot that leaves a player’s hands when there is time left on the clock and goes through the basket (or doesn’t) after time has expired, people have gotten a little sloppy. Shots that are made with less than a few seconds left are often referred to as buzzer beaters, even if you and I know that they technically should not be. In this Youtube video of great NBA buzzer beaters, about half of them should technically not qualify because there is still a fraction of a second left on the clock after they go in:

As you can see from the video, buzzer beaters are exciting! This is the third and last exception to their pure definition. A buzzer beater that happens when a team is down by forty points is not really considered a buzzer beater. To really be though of as a buzzer beater, a shot should not only fall after the clock hits zero, but it should also win the game for the team that shot it.

The only other sports parallel I can think of to the buzzer beater is from boxing where a fighter who has been knocked to the ground can be “saved by the bell.” In boxing, a downed fighter has ten seconds to rise back to his feet and prepare to continue boxing. If he or she can’t do that, they lose the fight. The only exception to this is a boxer who gets knocked down with less than ten seconds left in a round. In this case, depending on the rules of the fight, he or she might be given a free pass from that time requirement. It’s mostly an anachronism today — boxing rules have evolved enough to recognize that a fighter who cannot recover in ten seconds should not keep fighting, even if it is at the end of the round. Still, it’s interesting that both phrases for how sports action continues after the clock hits zero have become recognizable phrases in our language. People are fascinated by what will happen after their own time has run out. In the constructed world of sports, we get to decide how that works. In boxing and basketball, there is momentarily, life after death.

Thanks for asking,
Ezra Fischer