The Basketball Tournament runs from June 29-August 3 on ESPN.

MUNCIE, Ind. — The idea finally popped into his head March 10, 2007. Nick Elam remembers the exact day and the exact game, because it has changed his life.

For years, Elam watched basketball games and wondered why the last part of the game is so often the least exciting part. As an undergrad at University of Dayton, he would get with his friends and watch the NCAA Tournament, but he found it strange how slow the game gets at the end. One team continually fouls the other in hopes it will miss its free throws and it can mount a comeback. Elam and his friends threw around ideas on how to fix it.

And on March 10, 2007, Elam figured it out.

It was the ACC Tournament semifinals. North Carolina State upset Virginia Tech in what Elam deemed an exciting game – until the end, when he said all the air went out of the arena as Virginia Tech tried to come back by fouling. Elam remembers broadcaster Dick Vitale talking about how it was a slog to the end of the game.

Elam, who is now a Ball State professor and part-time Cincinnati Reds groundskeeper, will have his “Elam Ending” idea featured on ESPN and its family of networks all summer as The Basketball Tournament (TBT) – the winner-take-all tournament with a purse of $2 million – has adopted his idea and is using it for its entire tournament.

“I was always trying to figure out how to move project forward someway,” Elam said. “If I ever reached fatal flaw or reached a dead end, I would have moved on to something else, but I still to this day don’t see a fatal flaw to it.”

And now Elam has entered the mainstream. He has appeared on about 40 podcasts and radio shows in the last month, has had stories written about him and his ideas in ESPN, Sports Illustrated and Yahoo! Sports, among others. How did a former middle school principal get to this point? And will he change basketball as we know it?

The Elam Ending and its rise

Elam didn’t name this idea after himself – he’s not that conceited. He originally called it the Hybrid Duration Format, but TBT changed it to add his last name. To summarize Elam, he is a former middle school principal and high school math teacher who worked as a groundskeeper during the summer and would spend some of his free time tinkering with his idea on how to make basketball games a little bit better.

So, what exactly is the Elam Ending?

At the first dead ball after the 4:00 mark of the fourth quarter (or second half), the game clock is shut off and a Target Score is set equal to the leading team's score plus seven points. Then play resumes, without a game clock but still with a shot clock, until one team matches or exceeds the Target Score. So for example, let’s say the Team A was leading Team B 88-78 at the first dead ball under 4:00, the Target Score would be 95. The Team B would still have a chance to come back without fouling, while Team A couldn’t just stall and try to run the clock out; it would still have to score to win.

Elam said the primary aims of the format are to:

-Eliminate/reduce deliberate fouling by the trailing defense

-Eliminate/reduce stalling by the leading offense

-Eliminate/reduce rushed/sloppy possessions by the trailing offense

-Provide greater hope for late comebacks

-Provide more memorable game-ending moments

It might seem like a radical change to the ending of a basketball game, but Elam’s argument is that what we have now, when the final minutes are so often spent with a parade to the free-throw line after intentional fouls, is a more radical change from the way basketball is supposed to be played.

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Elam has reached out to a seemingly endless list of people over the years to promote his idea: NBA executives and analytics personnel, NCAA coaches and conference commissioners, WNBA owners, the sports analytics community, media members, sports agents, semi-pro and international leagues, book publishers and more. He still has a hand-written note he got from Jim Nantz back in 2007 when Nantz – who regularly calls the Final Four, Masters and other events – not necessarily endorsed Elam’s idea, but applauded the effort to fix the problem. The first full response Elam got was from broadcaster Dan Bonner, and Elam still has that email, too. The first person to publicly legitimize his idea was Tom Tango (also known as Tango Tiger), who is a prominent member of the analytics community. He started a thread on his forum in 2011, and that got some discussion going in a corner of the internet.

When TBT adopted it in 2017, it was already a well-established tournament in its fourth year and in no need of a gimmick. The organizers of the 72-team tournament were confident enough in Elam’s 67-page proposal to put it on ESPN and use it in the play-in games last year. This year, it is being used in all games.

“When we tested the Elam Ending during our play-in games last year, we were floored by how much fans loved it,” Jon Mugar, founder and CEO of TBT, said in a release. “What Nick taught us is that deliberate fouling happens in 50 percent of games, but is only effective 1.5 percent of the time, so fans are having to put up with a strategy that sucks up time and rarely works.

“Data aside, the energy in the arena during the Elam Ending portion of our games was awesome, and those teams were seven wins away from $2 million. On Aug. 3, at about 10:50 p.m., someone will have to make a shot for $2 million. I can’t wait for that moment.”

Elam’s journey and how he arrived at Ball State

While he was working and re-working the Elam Ending for the last 11 years, Elam vowed to always keep it as an independent project. He didn’t sink a lot of money into it, and he was never going to let it interfere with his day job as a middle school principal in Dayton, an assistant high school principal and a high school math teacher. Even for 13 years as a Cincinnati Reds groundskeeper, during some seasons in which he worked about 70 games per season, he didn’t share his ideas. His co-workers, some with whom he has grown close, didn’t know about it until last year.

Even though he is a member of Mensa – a high-IQ society that provides a forum for intellectual exchange – Elam has taken pride in working all different kinds of jobs in his life, like bagging groceries at Meijer, working at a video store, working for a moving company and delivering pizzas.

“I like having all these different kinds of ambitions and pursuits going on because if I have a bad day in one area, I can always draw encouragement from another area,” Elam says. “I’m no financial expert, but people talk about diversifying your portfolio. I guess for me, when it comes to my ambitions, I’ve tried to diversify my portfolio. I’ve never had a day that’s all bad. I’ve always had something to look forward to that can keep me going.”

Elam decided to switch paths last year. Instead of being an educator, he wanted to educate the educators. That’s how he ended up moving to Fishers and taking a job as the assistant professor of educational leadership at Ball State. Elam interviewed at several other universities, but Ball State separated itself because of the work environment.

“I was really impressed with how positive everyone was and how much everyone really seemed to genuinely enjoy what they do. That was actually a little bit different than some of the other interviews and universities I encountered,” Elam said. “People seemed burnt out and didn’t enjoy each other or what they did all that much. So that atmosphere really appealed to me, and that was the biggest reason. And that initial impression has proved me right, one year later. I can still say my colleagues are very positive and supportive.”

Elam Ending in the NBA?

Can you imagine if the Elam Ending was used in NBA games? Think about Game 1 of the NBA Finals when a brilliant performance from LeBron James was overshadowed by a player forgetting what the score was.

“The clock turns players clumsy,” Elam says. “We see what is the most important possession of the game turns into a blooper reel. JR Smith, an accomplished player, looked very clumsy because of the clock. If the only objective is to score as many points as you can without worrying about the timing of it all, we would see a higher quality of play. That would’ve been one of those games that would’ve come down to a sudden death scenario.”

Now Elam’s ideas seem to be gaining steam. Darryl Morey, the general manager of the Houston Rockets, accepted Elam's proposal to speak at the prestigious MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference earlier this year. Out of the blue a few weeks ago, Yahoo national baseball columnist Jeff Passan reached out to Elam and asked for what he would do to change baseball.

The TBT started on Friday and will be on ESPN3 until July 21, when the majority of the rest of the games will be on ESPN or ESPN2. It's a big step for Elam. Eventually, he could see an even greater step and his Elam Ending being adopted in the college or professional ranks. But he knows it takes time.

“When you try to explain it or read it on paper, it seems like it’s from outer space,” Elam says. “But when you see it in action, it’s more like real basketball than what we see now. It’s going to take time for the concept to gain more acceptance.”

Ryan O’Gara is a sports features writer at the Star Press. Contact him at (765) 213-5829, rogara@muncie.gannett.com or @RyanOGara.