Mazzulla’s wild NBA rule proposals include power plays, in-game fights

Mazzulla’s wild NBA rule proposals include power plays, in-game fights originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

There are few minds that work like Joe Mazzulla’s. So as you’d expect, the wheels immediately started spinning when the Boston Celtics head coach was asked Tuesday about rule changes he’d like to see in the NBA.

Marc Bertrand, co-host of 98.5 The Sports Hub’s Zolak & Bertrand, began the exchange Tuesday by asking Mazzulla what he thought of one radical proposal to eliminate the corner 3-pointer by having the 3-point line end about seven feet up from the baseline.

Mazzulla countered with an even more radical proposal: a power play.

“Basketball is one of the only sports that doesn’t have a power play,” Mazzulla said, as seen in the video player above. “… Let’s say you get a technical or let’s say you get a take foul, you get the one shot, but you’re not really rewarded for that, because if you miss it, you don’t get the reward for the take foul.

“So, there should be like a power play where, on a take foul, on a technical, you have to play five-on-four for five seconds or three passes.”

In hockey, players have to go to a penalty box for two minutes while their team plays shorthanded. Mazzulla would love to see a similar setup in basketball, but with a shorter time frame and the player serves their “penalty” on the other side of the court.

“I think we should institute power plays where, instead of taking the ball out on the side, if you commit a foul, the guy goes to the other side of halfcourt, and he can’t leave the halfcourt circle until like three seconds,” Mazzulla said.

That’s a pretty creative proposal, even if there’s a very slim chance the NBA considers such a drastic change anytime soon. But we’d imagine commissioner Adam Silver would prefer Mazzulla’s power play to the coach’s other rule change suggestion.

“The biggest thing that we rob people of from an entertainment standpoint is, you can’t fight anymore,” Mazzulla said. “We should bring back fighting.

“I mean, if you want to talk about robbing the league of entertainment, what’s more entertaining than a little scuffle? How come in baseball they’re allowed to clear the benches? How come in hockey they’re allowed to (fight)? And every time someone gets clubbed, you don’t have to go to the monitor to see if a misdemeanor has been committed.”

If you know anything about Mazzulla, this is extremely on-brand for the Celtics coach, who practices Brazilian jiu-jitsu on a regular basis and loves combat sports.

“I just don’t get why some sports are allowed to clear the benches,” Mazzulla added. “They have bats and weapons. We don’t, we just have a ball. I mean, the other sport has one of the hardest surface playing instruments in a puck and sticks, and yet we’re not allowed to throw down a little bit?”

No word on if Mazzulla will be invited to the next NBA rules committee meeting, but we’d pay to see him pitch some of these ideas to Silver and Co.