The One Thing Killing the 2012 NBA Finals: 4-Minute Timeouts

I'm sure the older Miami Heat players think four-minute timeouts are just fine. It certainly acts as substitute bench time for the overworked LeBron James and Dwyane Wade.

I, as a viewer, am not so enamored. It's bad enough that we've added replay review to the mix, gumming up the game to a tar-pit pace. Now we have four-minute timeouts? With cruddy ABC Disney movie tie-ins during ad breaks? Yeesh.

New rule: A man should not be able to run a mile before the timeout is up. While I realize that advertisers have to make money, at a certain point, the game's flow is impeded. Basketball is not football—action is meant to have some continuity. Four-minute timeouts all but ensure that we'll never have a finish quite like this fast-moving European heart-shaker:

While much of the focus was on the reffing Thursday night, there is a more subtle game troll out there, and he must be stopped. The four-minute timeout needs to go.