CEBL’s late-game scoring system adds excitement, popular with fans (2024)

In the early days, the Canadian Elite Basketball League’s Target Time was difficult to explain and easy to write off as a gimmick with limited staying power.

You’re doing what with the rules?

The idea of shutting off the game clock with about four minutes to play and adding nine points to the leading team’s score to establish a winning total seemed like a novelty act, doomed to wear out its welcome.

Well, the proof is on the court. Target time isn’t going away.

As the CEBL begins its second season in Winnipeg, local adherents have begun to realize what other converts have already concluded: the late game scoring system invented by Ball State math professor Nick Elam actually improves the game for fans, players and perhaps most importantly, a television audience.

“It’s really become a mainstay for us,” said CEBL commissioner Mike Morreale earlier this week. “I can’t imagine going back to the normal way, just based on the history we’ve had, the success we’ve had with it and the way the players rally around it and how the fans rally around it.

“I think the biggest thing, besides the fact that it creates some dramatic finishes and some really cool experiences, is that no one leaves the arena. Even in a blowout situation leading into Target Time, there still is that hope and that chance.”

Winnipeg fans and those watching the national TSN broadcast had a reminder at the Sea Bears’ home opener last Friday.

The home team, trailing the Scarborough Shooting Stars by five points at the start of Target Time, rallied to tie the score at 106-106 with the teams needing only one basket to reach the target score of 107. The Shooting Stars appeared to have the game sewn up when, on the next possession, Winnipeg forward Simon Hildebrandt fouled Scarborough’s Jackson Rowe.

Rowe needed to hit only one of his two shots to win the game but with the Canada Life Centre crowd roaring, he missed both shots. After Rowe’s second miss, Sea Bears star guard Teddy Allen snatched the rebound and headed down court and when he saw additional defensive pressure coming, rifled a pass to teammate Alex Campbell who calmly drained a corner three-pointer for the winning shot. The local team had a 109-106 victory and mayhem ensued.

“I liked the traditional way of basketball but then started seeing the value in it because now you’re not gonna get fans leaving when they think the game is done,” said Campell, who played in the CEBL before the implementation of the Target Score in 2020.

“There’s been times where teams have come back from 20-point deficits. It just makes the game more exciting, especially in a short season league like this one, where everything’s kind of on the fly.”

Elam was watching from Muncie, Ind., like a proud parent, 17 years after formulating the concept of the Elam Ending, which has been re-branded by the CEBL as Target Score time. Elam had been frustrated, like many fans, by the repeated fouling and slow-down tactics that plague the final minutes of many games. He still hears from some detractors.

“There are some naysayers who are allowing perfection to be the enemy of the good,” said Elam.

“Some people feel like it’s not possible to recreate the excitement of a buzzer-beater with an untimed finish, because that’s the most common counter argument I hear. That the untimed finish will never be able to live up to the excitement of a buzzer-beater. But you know, as all of the CEBL community saw with Winnipeg’s recent win when they got the benefit of a missed free throw and with Alex Campbell’s game-winning three-pointer from the corner, we had the eruption from the crowd and the entire team rushing out from the bench — it had the same look and sound and feel of a buzzer-beater.

“That’s why I continue to say that I really feel like the Elam ending is a way to keep and enhance what we already love about late game play in basketball and while doing so, we can still eliminate and alleviate the things that we don’t enjoy.”

No system is perfect and much like a game not using Target Score time, the winning points can be scored from the free throw line. Friday’s game could have concluded on a successful Rowe free throw, which would have been a letdown for many, the CEBL commissioner included.

“It’s the one part of Target Time that doesn’t have that flair for the dramatic that you would want it to have,” said Morreale. “It’s also depends on us educating and working with our officials to understand the intensity that comes with Target Time, and what that does from an officiating point of view, because we would like it to be very free flowing much like you’d see in a next-bucket-wins kind of way. So you almost put your whistle in your pocket, unless there’s a major glaring foul.

“The other day in Winnipeg, there was a foul of that led to free throws and I was not the happiest guy in the arena at that point. It certainly turned out to be great drama but that’s not the way we want the game decided.”

The CEBL has communicated with its officials on that very question — the validity of a foul call in the context of slightly different standard than they are used to at the U Sports level. In overly simple terms, Morreale wants to let the players play.

“There’s less control in Target Score time for coaches,” said Sea Bears GM and head coach Mike Taylor. “It’s really a player’s game at that point and it’s challenging for officials. I think the more experienced the officials are, the better to manage those situations, because it’s a quick decision. How do you still control the game and still keep the action flowing correctly? I think it should be really a significant clear foul.”

Taylor admits it’s also a coach’s responsibility to accept the new reality.

“If you’re going to have that philosophy, you can’t complain and cry if your guy gets tapped and the other team picks up the ball,” said Taylor. “There’s an element of toughness. There’s an element of strength. And for us it’s one of those things that you earn the right to win with toughness and togetherness on the court. And this is what you hope to really emphasize with your team and Target Score time and you hope the game is officiated that way.”

Elam estimates about 20 per cent of CEBL games end on free throws, which is acceptable number. The more widespread acceptance of some form of his Target Score time in other leagues will probably depend the NBA’s attitude.

Target time has been used for the last two seasons in the NBA’s G League, a developmental loop often used as a test case for potential rule changes. The current format in the G League involved tied games heading to overtime, where the first team to seven points is declared the winner.

“I think it will take time, but I think people were going to start to really see the appeal of untimed basketball,” said Elam. “And I think that would be the next part of the evolution after trying it out just in overtime.”

Longtime St. Paul’s High School varsity coach Jeff Laping is a convert to Target Time. He enjoys it in the CEBL and believes it could be effective at the university and high school levels.

“The only thing that matters is can you score?” said Laping, who recalls the backlash when Manitoba adopted FIBA rules in 2007. “Which just adds such a different dynamic to how coaches prepare and how teams prepare and that’s a great thing. Now, I think the younger you go, the less effective that becomes because now you could have coaches that are going to prepare for it too much and take away time from players becoming better shooters and dribblers… but certainly maybe at the varsity level, I think it certainly could find a place.”

mike.sawatzky@freepress.mb.ca