Under NBA Commissioner Adam Silver, the league has continued to experiment with ways to improve the quality of basketball games on a nightly basis.
Silver has been more than willing to tweak the rules and formats to pre-existing events to engage fans more, but he’s also been unafraid to introduce new events like the Play-In Tournament and the NBA Cup. He has already teased changes to the 2026 NBA All-Star Game to be held at Intuit Dome in Los Angeles, with the annual event featuring a USA versus the world format.
While some of the changes haven’t resonated with fans, it’s good to see that Silver and the league office are doing what they can to keep the regular season interesting. Aside from events, the NBA has also considered rule changes to help improve the flow of games.
One new quirk to the rulebook for the 2025-26 season is that end-of-period heaves that miss will now be attributed as a team field goal attempt rather than one for the player shooting the basketball, via Shams Charania of ESPN:
The NBA will implement a new change for the 2025-26 season: unsuccessful end-of-period heaves will now be recorded as a missed field-goal attempt for the team, not the player, sources tell ESPN. Those long heaves will no longer impact an individual player's percentages.
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) September 10, 2025
So expect even more long-range shots from players this season, which was behind motivation of the change and the league testing it at Summer League in July. The Competition Committee has been in support of the adjustment in recent months too. https://t.co/z9ue0Z219j
— Shams Charania (@ShamsCharania) September 10, 2025
There were discussions about the potential rule change once traction began to form about players potentially saving themselves from lowering their 3-point percentage by avoiding end-of-period heaves. It seems silly on paper to care about such a thing, but players are conscious of how their percentages can affect their perception as a player as well as potentially their free agency prospects.
The rule change is a minor one that surely every player will appreciate and it’ll be fun to see them throw up more shots at the end of quarters. It was tested out during Summer League and was a success, so now it looks like it will be implemented in regular season games.
How many miles will Lakers travel during 2025-26 NBA season
Travel is one of the most underrated challenges for teams during the regular season as it ruins players’ natural body rhythms. When it comes to the Los Angeles Lakers and their 2025-26 season, they’ll be traveling 45,507 total miles and crossing 47 time zones.
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