Rule changes I would like to see

With all the discussion about too many 3's and the current state of the game, I thought I'd throw out my own thoughts on ways the game can improve.

Frankly, I'm more inclined to agree with Bill Simmons and Kirk Goldsberry who posit that the game is in a good place right now and that a lot of the discourse about the state of the game relies on a lot of bias that views the Jordan-era style through rose-colored lenses. To summarize, they agree that Bulls vs. Knicks/Magic/Sonics at the time were awesome games, games like Warriors/Nuggets, Mavericks/Wizards, etc. were exceptionally bad, and that the overall baseline of game quality is much higher now than it was back then. This is an argument I overall agree with, but that doesn't mean there isn't room for improvement.

Here's a list of my suggestions, many of which I think would be unrealistic for pragmatic reasons:

1) Less timeouts. You should expect an average game to last about 2x the amount of game time (5 timeouts in total). In FIBA, 40 minutes (4 10-min quarters) and games typically last about 80-90 minutes. Following that rule, NBA games should last close to 100 minutes. Instead, the average NBA game runs about 135 minutes (source). Part of what I love about the FIBA/Olympic games is there was a better flow because there were less momentum-stopping timeouts. I guess they already reduced the number of timeouts from 18 to 14 about 8 years ago, but the mandatory TV timeouts still suck the life out of the game. However, since less timeouts means less commercials which means less ad revenue, I doubt they will ever go much lower.

2) Allow more perimeter defense. Creating a 4-point arc isn't going to fix the root of the problem. Instead, we need to allow more contact on the perimeter. While I'm not advocating for a return to the grind-out years of the early-aughts between the likes of the Pistons and Spurs, I think part of the root of the too-many-3s criticism is the fact that we've discouraged players from defending the ball farther out from the hoop. We generally agree that picking up a foul 25 feet from the hoop is kind of a bad idea, but that means, as a result, the defender doesn't pick up their man until their 22 feet from the hoop, so it's hard to fault a player from shooting with that kind of space, especially if you're a guy like Curry, Young, Lillard, etc.

3) Stop bailing out bump finishes. This one is particularly hard to administer because it's a hard differentiation for the refs. But, with the bump finish now being a coached and drilled move, refs can't bail out the ball handler who veers into the defender regardless of whether they extend an arm or not. It results in free-throws, which slows the game down dramatically. It should, at best, be a no-call on average.

4) No back-to-back timeouts. In late-game situations, nothing is more obnoxious to me than offensive team calling a timeout, drawing up a play, executing poorly/defended well, then calling another timeout to avoid a 5-sec call.

5) No inbounding into backcourt. On that note, if an inbound play gets defended well, the inbounding team shouldn't be allowed to lob the ball into the backcourt. Neither is allowed in FIBA and it makes the players execute better whilst allowing the possibility of a turnover and maybe making it a little more exciting.