The NBA announced Thursday that it will test a radical new “one free-throw rule” during this month’s Summer League showcases across Salt Lake City, Northern California, and Las Vegas. The average NBA game now runs nearly two hours and twenty minutes, a figure that has steadily crept upward and helped fuel a decade of declining ratings and shrinking younger audiences who have little patience for the ritualized stop-start of back-to-back free throws.

While not exactly solving the flopping problem fans have been complaining about, it’s designed to shorten the free-throw stretches that grind momentum to a halt.

The league has until the end of Summer League, roughly mid-July, to collect enough data to bring a formal recommendation to the Competition Committee before the regular-season rules window closes in September.

If the experiment proves successful, it could fundamentally alter how end-game tactics are strategized. If it doesn’t, it joins a long list of ideas that looked clean on a whiteboard and fell apart against real competition.

How the One Free-Throw rule operates on the floor

Under standard NBA officiating guidelines, a player fouled in the act of shooting is awarded either two or three individual free-throw attempts, depending on where the shot was taken.

The newly introduced experimental rule condenses any shooting foul into a single free-throw attempt. Crucially, that solitary attempt will carry the exact same total point value as the multiple free throws it is replacing.

Simplified, it looks like this:

• Two-Point Fouls: A player fouled on a missed two-point shot takes just one free throw, which is worth two points if successful.

• Three-Point Fouls: A player hacked on a missed three-point attempt takes a single free throw worth three points.

• And-1 Situations: Traditional three-point or four-point plays remain completely unaltered, counting as one shot for one point.

For example, if a player is fouled while attempting a standard two-point basket and misses, they will step up to the line for just one free throw worth two points.

Traditional “And-1” opportunities—where a player makes the basket despite being fouled—will continue to be governed by standard rules, awarding the player one free throw worth one point.

To maintain the integrity of late-game execution, the league has implemented an important time restriction. The one-shot format will not apply to the final two minutes of the fourth quarter, nor to any overtime play, where standard NBA free-throw rules automatically resume.

That carve-out is deliberate – it protects the very sequences where intentional fouling as a strategy, and the tense precision of each individual shot, still matter most to the outcome.

Seven Years of Data the NBA Is Now Ready to Act On

This pace-of-play change isn’t sudden. The NBA G League has used the same format since 2019–20, and six seasons of data showed it shortened broadcasts and cut dead-ball time. That gave the league confidence to try it in Summer League.

There are bound to be drawbacks, of course. Legendary defensive stalwart, Ron Harper already criticized this rule.

Harper’s point, and plenty of people around the league quietly agree, is that you’re not raising the stakes, you’re just changing the packaging. A guy who shoots 65% from the line doesn’t suddenly become a liability because he’s taking one shot instead of two. The math follows him to the line either way.

But this is a chance for Adam Silver’s office to iron out the wrinkles.

The Summer League has previously served as the official testing ground for multiple rules that eventually graduated to the regular season, including the coaches’ challenge, resetting the 24-second shot clock to 14 seconds on offensive rebounds, and the transition take foul penalty.

The Summer League usually features past G-Leaguers looking to cut their teeth. Like the Lakers’ lineup, this weekend will feature South Bay regular, Adou Thiero. So they won’t be caught off guard by this rule.

The one free-throw rule is not the only new feature being introduced to the public. The league also revealed that it will test a “connected basketball” containing an embedded sensor designed to detect precise contact. According to the NBA, the hidden sensor does not affect the ball’s weight, feel, or playability, and the collected data will support future officiating tracking systems, such as determining last-touch out-of-bounds calls.

Both experimental features were heavily vetted during a recent Competition Committee meeting before receiving approval.

The new-look rules will debut on Friday with the tip-off of the California Classic in San Francisco and Sacramento, featuring highly anticipated rookies like AJ Dybantsa, Darryn Peterson, and Cameron Boozer as they navigate a modernized brand of basketball.