The Josh Innes Show - The NBA Heave Rule

Episode Date: July 7, 2025

The NBA is testing out a "Heave Rule" in summer league. What is a heave rule? Well, it's essentially a rule for selfish, stat minded players. Lets explain. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The clock expires so he gets you know the opportunity to shoot it and see if it goes in but the result doesn't matter therefore when it misses you know 99 times out of 100 then this person will not see their shooting percentage impacted that would be my guess and if that's the case if we're having to build in rules to get guys to shoot half quarter or half court shots at the end of a quarter, that's really sad that we're making that a rule of rewarding them in some way for attempting a shot. But let's play some commercials and read this story. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling,

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We can now confirm the stolen favorites have resurfaced at McDonald's Canada. The international menu heist. Try them all while you can for a limited time in participating McDonald's in Canada. Alright, here we go. Explaining the NBA's Summer League Heave rule. The NBA is always looking to improve its game and with players getting more and more concerned with their personal stats, a rule that was previously experimented with in the G League is now making its way into the Summer League. The new Heave rule is an effort to get players more invested in last-second shots from their own side of the court at the end of quarters. Full court buzzer

beaters have made some of the NBA's most viral moments in recent years. Whether it's the Joker casually one-handing a shot at three-quarters court and acting like it was nothing, or Steven Adams doing the same and then hitting a shimmy, these moments have become fewer and far between as NBA players recognize that their stats can affect contract negotiations down the line." Okay, that's fucking stupid. No one has ever not gotten a contract because they attempted two or three three quarter shots that impacted their shooting percentage. Nobody's shooting percentage is going to be impacted that much. First off, there's four, really the most you're going to have is probably four opportunities to shoot a three-quarter court shot in a game. And

the odds are you're not going to be the one taking all of those. Usually you can cut that in half, the other team might end up having the ball two times or even three times or four times. So how many three-quarter length shots, three-quarter court length shots are players taking in a given season a handful and I'm sure there's other guys like a Steph Curry who might take more because he's got a better shot of making it whatever how many of these shots are actually attempted. That's what I'd like to know. Maybe this story will have that I'd like to know,

but it's not enough for your shooting percentage to be so negatively impacted that it's going enough for your shooting percentage to be so negatively Impacted that it's gonna cost you money in a contract negotiation No one's gonna go into LeBron or Steph Curry or somebody else and go Yeah We're gonna take a couple million dollars off because your shooting percentage is one tick below where we think it should be and then you look Back and think of the four core Link of the court shots you missed. That's absurd. NBA players have recognized that their stats can affect contract negotiations down the line.

Missed shots lead to lower field goal percentages, which means less money. That's not real. There is no way that's real. There is no way that a team has a star player somebody they want to sign and they go Yeah, we were really hoping you'd shoot, you know 49.7 percent but you only shot 49.4 percent therefore that's going to cost you one million dollars It's bullshit and if players are truly thinking like that then fuck them. That's absurd. That's bonkers, man.

Let's continue. I lost the story here. Despite attempting to heave being objectively the correct play, given the opponents will not have a chance to retaliate, many players have opted to avoid taking them all together. The Houston Rockets newest star Kevin Durant has even claimed that he will refuse to take such shots, even shots if he isn't having a good night from the floor. He'll take an extra dribble or two in order to make sure the buzzer goes off before attempting the shot. Thusly, Durant has not attempted a heave since the 2017-2018 season. That's bogus, man. Kevin Durant is one of the best basketball players on the planet. He is still one of the best basketball players on the planet. And you want me to believe that Kevin Durant's money is impacted because he doesn't attempt a heave. That's such bullshit. These guys are dopes. Like, I understand getting your money and I understand trying to avoid

shit that's going to impact your money because you got a short window to make a lot of money and then you live off of that the rest of your life and I get all that shit. You will not convince me that Kevin Durant has ever had a contract negotiation go south because of his shooting percentage being a tick. Like how much like how like I need data on this. How much can your shooting percentage truly be impacted by a handful of heaves every year? How much could it be? It can't be low enough to truly make that much of a difference. The new rule will attempt to incentivize more of these shots. Here's what to know. The new rule states that any shot attempt from beyond 36 feet from the basket, which is beyond the center circle extended within three seconds from the end of a quarter

Will not count against the end of the individual players shooting statistics only the teams field goal percentage. That's chicken shit Like I'm all about doing things to try to get more exciting things to happen in sports. I'm all about the golden at bat rule I think that's awesome. Like I'm all about changing things up with kickoffs. I'm all about Oh, the onside kick me in a pass instead of a kick. These are things that I really enjoy and would really like to see. But those are things that make the game better for the fan and make things that weren't attainable, more

attainable. Like like late in the game, if you throw a 20 yard pass instead of having to recover an onside kick, there's a better chance that you get the ball and have more drama in the game. These are things that make the game better. You want to make sure that some guy, because he shoots a half-court shot, doesn't see his shooting percentage go down? It's a shot! You want to tell me that like and these dudes can make half court shots almost easily now. I don't know. I'd like to me that's pathetic. Like what kind of loser are you? Like when you talk about reasons why people dislike basketball and I'm not one of them.

I enjoy watching the NBA. I enjoy betting on the NBA. I enjoy going to NBA games. I'm not some NBA like I don't shit on the NBA. I like the NBA. But the idea that we're at a point where players need to be incentivized to take a shot that can help their team like it's really the most selfish thing you can do like it is it like there is no noble reason for not taking that shot. You're doing it because you're worried about your own stats and again, nobody's not getting a deal because you attempted a half-court shot and missed it. During its time in the G League, the Heave rule was generally accepted positively.

Most criticisms of the new rules were centered around not wanting to cater to selfish players or potential statistical inconsistencies in the future. However, neither of those issues appear damaging to the game, but it is. It's not damaging. It's not going to like that's the thing. Is it going to stop people from watching the game? No, but is it making the game any better? Not really, because that shot's probably not going in anyway. So while you get to watch some guy heave one up and I don't like when there's rules like this that I don't think truly make the game any better. You're just trying to get like one like four more shot attempts in the game and maybe

one out of 20 of them goes in and people go nuts because a guy hits a three-quarterling shot, but then there's no drama because if it misses the guy didn't really miss it. Like I don't know, you can say that we're dopes because we're shitting on dudes for being selfish players but that is by definition a selfish thing That would be like like if the NFL it's kind of similar if the NFL didn't count it as an interception if you threw a Hail Mary at the end of a half if you throw a Hail Mary at the end of a half, if you throw

a Hail Mary at the end of a half and it's intercepted in the end zone, then it doesn't count as an interception for the player, it counts as an interception for the team or a turnover for the team. The NFL doesn't do that and I can make an argument that there is no negative that's going to come from you attempting a half court shot in basketball. You miss it and instead of going 10 for 20 in a game, you go for 10 for 21. Who gives a shit? You talk about stats that could hurt somebody in terms of contract negotiations or maybe bonuses. I would imagine that's part of it too. Maybe a guy's got a shooting percentage bonus. Maybe a guy's got a bonus for three pointer percentage,

whatever it is. I'm sure those exist. But in the NFL, I bet you there are contract stipulations and bonuses in a dude's contract that say if you throw over this number of interceptions, you don't get a bonus. I would argue that an interception thrown by a quarterback in a Hail Mary situation is far more detrimental to the overall statistical breakdown of that player than if a guy misses a half court shot and goes 10 of 21 instead of 10 of 20. Whereas a quarterback you go from having one interception to two and like that's a huge thing

just like in anything in football everything is is five times what it is in a basketball game because there's you know a fifth of the games so obviously the statistics are going to matter more but like can you imagine if if Pat Mahomes or somebody doesn't throw a Hail Mary at the end of the half because well you know we have a chance to score some points here but I'd rather rack up another 15 yards and not throw an interception because there's truly no real reason to throw a Hail Mary the odds are it's going to get batted down or intercepted or knocked out of bounds statistically. I would imagine that far more of those passes are intercepted than caught for touchdowns but these guys in that league aren't doing it whereas in the NBA we're having to build special rules because Kevin Durant doesn't want to shoot a half court shot because he's afraid of what it's going to mean for his contract. It would be like saying, well, we're not going to have a guy strikeout count because they're down by 10. So even though he struck out, we don't want to make him afraid

to swing in a 10 run game. So let's just, you know, once it hits a certain number of runs down, none of these plate appearances count against your batting average or these at bats count against your batting average. How about we put them all down as sacrifices? Like it's just stupid shit. Anyway, more to come.