5 weird NBA rules you didn't know about - Part 1
It's not every day that rules are violated in bizarre ways in basketball, but this is a sport that has by far the most rules and regulations and interpretations of the top 10 most popular ball games on the planet. FIBA itself has a thick rulebook with at least 2000 interpretations up to my knowledge, but NBA basketball ramps the thickness of the rulebook up a notch even from there.
There are rules regulating everything a player does on and off the court, including rules regarding clothing, sleeves, mannerisms and fans. In this article, we do a run through of some bizarre rules in the best professional basketball league on the planet that are different from those in other competitions, but are still as weird as they come.
Without further ado, the following are 5 of the weirdest rules that exist in the NBA rule book.
#1 Jump-ball mixup
If both teams mix-up jump ball sides at the start of the game and one of the teams scores on the opposite side, the referee has 24 seconds of game time to correct it. If even the referees get confused and realize later than 24 seconds, the game continues as if the correct sides were chosen.
The field goals scored till that point are considered legitimate and sides are reversed in the following half. If this same violation occurs at a time other than the start of the game, the teams change sides at the end of that quarter and are supposed to keep scoring on the 'wrong' side for the rest of the duration of that period.
In recorded NBA history (from Wilt Chamberlain's heyday in 1959 onwards), there have been no such instances of a mixup of such a magnitude. Of course, professional players know when not to screw up a simple thing. If JR Smith were a center, though.......