96 teams, 32 per regional (click)

As someone who runs tournaments and mints brackets for a living, here’s how I would’ve structured the new 96-team format that the NCAA just announced. First of all, since I’m an NBA guy, I’m all for the expansion because it allows NBA’ers to better evaluate draft prospects under one roof – but that’s for another blogpost.

NCAA vice president Greg Shaheen yesterday suggested the following changes to the existing 65-team format…
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Flagrant foul committed on Dwight Howard.

Here at Dream League, we have so many games each and every week, eventually we’ll see even the most obscure calls per the rules of the NBA.

Remember when there was no such thing as an “and-one” and in the NBA, if you got fouled on a made basket, you got to shoot two to make one?

Yeah, me neither. But even something as ancient as “two-to-make-one” is still possible in today’s game!

In the NBA, if there’s a flagrant foul, you get two free throw shots and the ball. You know that already. But what if there’s a flagrant foul, and you actually made the shot? What then? Two shots and the ball still?

No, you get two shots to make the “and-one” free throw. That’s when the two-to-make-one returns from the grave!

Funny post appeared in TrueHoop today: Sneaking a suspended player on the court in a teammate’s uniform. If you’re too lazy to click, it starts with a Turkish player in his country’s top pro league. He gets suspended for fighting. While he’s serving the suspension, in an upcoming game he and his coach conspire to have him put a subpar teammate’s jersey on and sneak into a game! I’ll let TrueHoop top it off…

he was only detected…after a rival team noticed suspiciously good statistics for Tufan Ersöz, the player whose jersey [Cemal Nalga] was wearing

Sneaking players in dreamleague? Never!

I said this was funny, but at the same time, it brings up some serious issues concerning fair play.

To the other Poor Man’s Commishes out there, I guarantee you this will happen in your league, if it hasn’t happened already.

I hate to admit it, but every season in our dreamleague rec leagues, this also happens. Once again, we have evidence that what happens in the pros, happens in dreamleague!
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Brad Miller's shot with 0.3 did not get off in time.

Last night NBA referees negated Brad Miller’s potential buzzer-beating win in the Chicago Bulls’ one-point loss to the Denver Nuggets. You can see in the paused replay above that, in fact, he did not get the shot off in time when the clock showed zeros.

Here’s a rare situation where if it can happen in the NBA, it can never happen in Dream League. In Dream League, Brad Miller’s shot counts and everybody puts it in the Top Ten coolest basketball things they’ve ever participated in. We would’ve never known that the shot really shouldn’t have counted. This brings me back to a similar play in Dream League’s Open League many years ago when the NBA’s 0.3-second rule was first introduced.
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