Basketball Should be Played in Sets

Hear me out

Recently, I’ve worked a few hours for a part-time role requiring me to attend live sporting events and record certain information on my phone. As a result, I’ve watched about a half dozen NCAA volleyball games. At first, the sport seems to hold a lot in common with basketball. Both sports favor the tall and play on squeaky hardwood. Yet, they differ in their basic structure. Basketball transpires over either two halves or four quarters. Besides tracking the foul bonus, these time segments don’t impact much. If you lead by twenty points after the first half, you take that twenty-point lead into the second. Volleyball, on the other hand, plays out in five sets. The first four sets end when a team scores 25 points, while the fifth requires only 15. Teams must also secure a point advantage in each set, meaning a set cannot end 25-24 or 15-14. In both cases, teams will play on until one gains a two-point lead over their opponent. Thus, unlike basketball, leads do not carry over from period to period. If a squad wins the first set 25-0, their opponent can tie the game by winning the next 28-26.

Why do these two sports disagree on the basic setup of the game? Why don’t all sports use sets?

Let’s explore one major why sets wouldn’t work in some sports: infrequent scoring. For soccer, 22% of EPL games drew last season. Similarly, the National Hockey League saw 20% of its matches extend into overtime. If both sports see so many deadlocks after full-length games, they’d see even more in individual sets. How many 20-minute soccer sets would end 0-0? How many 15-minute hockey sets would end 0-0 or 1-1? Soccer would turn into a battle of penalty shootouts, while NHL players might have to suffer through five overtimes. The same even applies to American football. One of football’s dirty secrets is that it’s a low-scoring affair. NFL teams have averaged about 20-24 points per game for decades. Twenty points represent two touchdowns and two field goals while 24 comes from three touchdowns and one field goal. That means the average NFL game ends 4 (the cool way) to 4 (the lame way)¹. You can’t split that into five sets.

…but none of that applies to basketball. NBA teams average 114 points per game. That’s more than enough to split into five sets. Could basketball switch to a set format? To answer that, we need to understand why a sport might utilize sets in the first place.

Let’s explore the commonalities of set-based sports like volleyball, tennis, and badminton. First, each of these sports involves hitting balls over a net. Although that’s a common trait, it’s hard to see why hitting a ball over the net requires sets while putting one in a net necessitates halves and quarters. The second commonality probably matters more. In each of the net-and-set games, every play ends in score. Nobody punts, turns the puck over, or grabs a defensive rebound in tennis. Every instance ends in one of the two sides scoring.

Is there a 1:1 relationship between “always score sports” and “set sports.” No. Tennis may fit into both categories, but remember that tennis is just a sport for people who are too unathletic to play pickleball. In that Real Man’s game, the sides only score on their serve. That means that matches can contain long strings of gameplay without a point from either side. Even volleyball used to work this way. This was “side out” system, hence the “side out” chat you can hear in volleyball games today, even though this rule was abandoned in the early 2000s.

Hence, neither ball-over-time nor always-score components necessitate sets. Why, then, might a sport prefer the set system? Sets, unlike time, have a memoryless property. In time-based games, it’s a truism that teams win by scoring the most points. In volleyball or tennis, that’s not the case. A team can triumph a volleyball match if they get crushed in two sets and squeak by the other three. Thus, time-based sports are, for the lack of better words, more competitive and objective.

I must confess that I’m not sure “competitive” and “objective” are the right terms. Let me explain. Shaq, known for his poor form at the free throw line, liked to say that he “hit them when the count.” His excuse never made sense, since free throws count equally in every part of the game. His claim would add up, however, in set-based sports. While a brick in the first quarter matters as much as one in the last minute of the fourth, a first-set serve into the net might not matter at all. If you lose a set, none of the scored points mattered. Basketball and football teams need to crawl their way back after a pitiful first half. Meanwhile, volleyball teams start with a clean sheet after a set 1 beatdown.

If a time-based setup is more competitive, does that make it better? I would buy that if that entire apparatus of North American sports weren’t set up make it the winners less objective. Everyone roots for the 14 seed to eliminate the 3 seed in March Madness, even if we understand the on-paper superiority of the 3 seed. When the 10-6 Giants defeated the 16-0 Patriots, we all knew that the Patriots were the still better team. They won more games, including one against those same Giants. Yet, everyone (outside of Pats fans, of course) remembers this game fondly. Likewise, no American left the theater after watching Miracle and thought “the Soviet Union has the objectively better team, but they don’t get the gold after one unlcuky game? What a travesty!” After all, if we wanted objectivity, we could use the ELO system to determine a champion. We don’t want that, though. We want to see the 2012 Kings take home the Stanley Cup after losing the majority of their regular season games.

Another issue with sets is the impact on comparing individual achievement. If basketball worked like volleyball, Wilt wouldn’t have a 100-point game. He’d just have a very high-scoring one that ended after 3 sets. As such, it might make it harder for us to admire and compare the contributions of the most talented. Yet, volleyball doesn’t seem to face this struggle. Here’s a blurb for last season’s player of the year winner:

Set career bests for points, points per set, kills, and kills per set and led the team in each of those categories

Reached double-figures in kills in 28 matches and recorded her 1,000th career kill early this season

The “per game” figures would convert to “per set.” After all, non-per-game metrics exist in other contexts. The website basketball-reference displays per-36-minute metrics for every player. What would be crazy about a per-3-set metric? We see this in other sports too. The American League has been tracking batting average and ERA since it was the Pangean League. Besides, do you think anything can stop sports fans from debating dumb nonsense? Tell me Fox Sports couldn’t air this argument.

Chris Broussard: Jordan was just cold-blooded. In his six championship runs with the Bulls, he won 87% of fifth sets. Even if you include the early years when he played a bunch of bums, he still won 80% of fifth sets in the playoffs. Lebran hasn’t even won 80% in any single playoff run.

Nick Wright: Yes, you’re right. That’s because Lebron DIDN’T NEED A FIFTH SET. Look, Chris, I put this together. I tried as hard as I could to make this favorable to JORDAN. I took Lebron’s last four playoff runs and compared to Jordan’s four BEST playoff. Okay, I’m comparing OLD MAN LEBRON to prime Jordan. Look at this. In Lebron’s last four playoff runs, 75% of his wins came without a fifth set. In Jordan’s four best runs, he never cleared 65%. Yeah, Jordan was better in the fifth set, because NEVER NEEDED THEM.

Chris Broussard: Come on, man. Nick, come on. You. Can’t. Compare. Different. ERAS! Jordan played before the rule change that moved sets from 20 points to 25 points. Everyone played more fifth sets in Jordan’s days. Yeah, Lebron played fewer fifth set matches. So did James Harden. You’re gonna tell me James Harden is better Jordan.

Nick Wright: YES. HE IS.

Chris Broussand: (sighs, shakes head) Unbelievable

There is, however, one major flaw with sets: variable timing. Sure, sports like football and hockey can go to overtime. Still, you can expect football games to finish 3-4 hours after kickoff and hockey games to end 2.5-3 hours after puck drop. Set-based sports make no such guarantee. I’ve seen volleyball games last anywhere from 80 minutes to over three-and-half hours. The same holds for tennis, where a three-set snoozer takes much less time than a five-set nailbiter.

Rule changes can mitigate this. Fifth-set tiebreakers have ended affairs like the three-day Wimbledon match between Isner and Mahut. Volleyball could do the same. First, I don’t see any reason why teams should have to win any of the first four sets (the 25-point ones) by two. I understand that the serving side faces a disadvantage. However, if a team can’t manage a service point after 25 attempts, it’s fair to hand the frame to their opponent. Adopting a “first to 25, no matter what” rule could attenuate the risk of a marathon match. This wouldn’t fix the other side of variable length. While overly long games are annoying, short ones aren’t ideal either. That’s one of the advantages of the regulation-plus-overtime format in sports like hockey. A 3-overtime game might force some fans to sit through a six-hour match, but there’s no risk of the competitor ending after two periods. Volleyball could address this by making the first two sets longer. Maybe instead of 25-25-25-25-15, they do 29-29-21-21-11 and only the last set has a “win by two” requirement. That would shorten the tails of the game-length distribution.

For a moment, let’s accept that variable game length represents a major problem. Wouldn’t that imply that tennis and volleyball should use a time-based system? Why not “an ace from Federer… but was it in time? No, Djokovic wins the US Open!” If variable length is game-breaking in basketball, it must be game-breaking in the sports that use it too. In other words, the game-length argument forces you to bite a major bullet, unless you come up with some compelling reason that clocks don’t work for ball-over-net sports. It’s not like these sports would be susceptible to time wasting. Tennis only allows one hit per side while volleyball only allows three. So we’re forced to accept that 1) we need a radical rewrite to tons of sports or 2) variable game length is a problem, but not enough of a problem to abolish it altogether. I’ll opt for #2.

If I accept the variable length problem, I need to weigh it against the benefits of a set-based system. I see two upsides. First, it eliminates the blowout problem. In game four of both the recent NBA and NHL finals, the home sides dominated the first halves of their respective games. Since totals never reset, the back half of these games featured meaningless action between faceless players. In volleyball, these sorts of blowouts can’t occur. Maybe a side loses the first two sets by 20 points each, but they could theoretically eke out a 2-point win in the next three sets and take home the victory. Even if the third set proves just as futile, both sides can head to the locker room afterward. No one needs to quiet quit their way through “garbage time.” Granted, I can see how someone would consider this a flaw. After all, if a team doesn’t show up for the first third of the game, why shouldn’t that count against them in the last two-thirds? I already discussed this in the “objectivity” paragraph, so I won’t relitigate it here. This amounts to a matter of preference, though I think the set system aligns with the pro-underdog attitude of North American sports.

Blowouts aren’t the main reason why basketball should adopt sets. The main reason is this: 7135443289539252195. You know what… just ignore that number for now. I’ll get back to it later.

I’m not one of those Americans who says “soccer is so boring, all they do is roll in the grass and cry.” I am, however, one of those Americans who says “when a a team is leading by one goal at the end… soccer is so boring, all they do is roll on the grass and cry.” British fans say the same thing, albeit with fewer post-alveolar taps and more glottal stops. Soccer announcers always express their annoyance with end-game time wasting. Although stoppage time should account for this, refs rarely add enough minutes to mitigate the tactic.

American football is more of a mixed bag. Some games finish with a blistering two-minute drill. More often than not, though, the final minutes feature an endless sequence of timeouts, reviews, commercials, spikes, and incomplete passes. Other times, the game ends with an uneventful victory formation. This tactic has the benefit of hastening the game’s completion, but watching a star athlete sit down four times in a row hardly qualifies as compelling entertainment.

Hockey showcases the most exciting endgame. If a team faces a one or two-goal deficit in the final minutes, they substitute their goalie for an extra attacker. This increases the likelihood of a goal at both ends. The attacking team boasts a 6-5 skater advantage, all but guaranteeing clean possession. The defense, meanwhile, doesn’t need much possession. With the opposing goalie on the bench, a split-second crack at the puck can ice the game. Thus, the tension and excitement rise as the game reaches its conclusion.

Quiz time. Without scrolling up, answer the following questions. Remember that long sequence of numbers? What was the first digit? The last? You might remember those. Now, what was the fourth? The seventh? The eleventh? No chance. Here’s the: you remember the beginning and end more than anything else. Although every game starts exciting, I can’t say the same about how they end. If hockey is tense, football is mixed, and soccer is boring, then basketball is excruciating. The final minutes of soccer or football look like soccer and football, albeit at 0.5x speed. A close basketball game neither looks nor feels anything like normal basketball. Trailing teams throw their normal defense out the window in favor of fouling and praying that their opponents brick their free throws. This wouldn’t happen with the volleyball format. If a team were down 21-24 in a first-to-25-set, the last thing they’d want to do is foul and send their opponent to the charity stripe.

If I remove my Golden Knights bias, the best Big Four championship of my lifetime came when the Cavaliers defeated the Warriors in 2016. It wasn’t just the storylines: a rematch of the previous finals, LeBron returning to Cleveland, Golden State breaking MJ’s 72-10 record. The final game came down to tense, back-and-forth action. Both defenses stepped up, meaning every shot felt like it could be the championship winner. The iconic “OOOOOOHHHH BLOCKED BY JAMES” play led to a Cleveland possession at the other end of the court. It didn’t begin a stop-and-start foul-fest. James did find his way to the free-throw line, but that’s only because he nearly dunked on Draymond Green’s crooked face. The final three-and-a-half minutes wouldn’t have nearly 30 million views on YouTube if it ended like a typical basketball game. If the NBA functioned volleyball, the end of every close game could feel like that.

1. Of course I don’t count extra points!