Imagine Muggsy Bogues having played a lengthy NBA career at 4-foot-3, Yao Ming towering way above the competition at 6-foot-6. That in essence is what it would be like if former NBA assistant coach Tom Newell had his way.

Newell is trying to organize exhibition games played on 11-foot rims across the country. The first of what he hopes will be several such exhibitions will take place tonight on the campus of the University of Washington.

Kansas University associate athletic director Larry Keating, chairman of the NCAA basketball rules committee, said he would like to view a tape of the exhibition. Doing so would be something of a jog down memory lane. Keating said he watched an exhibition on an 11-foot hoop at Cal State-Los Angeles.

“Long, long time ago,” Keating said. “It was when the Final Four was in L.A. It was either (Bill) Walton’s sophomore year or before him.”

There is a no-dunking rule for tonight’s game, not that it’s a given anybody could have slammed one on an 11-foot hoop in game conditions. Former NCAA Division I and Division II players will play in the exhibition.

Newell’s thinking is that if the dunk were taken out of the game, it would promote more team play, better passing, a more pleasing product to watch.

It’s an intriguing fantasy, but it doesn’t stand a chance of leading to anything of substance any time soon.

“He’s not going to get too far,” Keating said. “Too much of an expense to change equipment. Plus, the women wouldn’t use it. You would have to come up with an adjustable basket. Everyone would need to get one. Finances would play a part in any major change like that.”

So would emotions. Children’s bedroom walls aren’t covered with posters of Tim Duncan making a nifty interior pass. The posters feature jams, jams and more jams.

“It takes the dunk out of the game, and they aren’t going to do that,” Keating said. “Purists would say that’s not such a big deal, but in today’s game, that would be almost like doing away with the three-point shot.”

The raised rim would squeeze scoring near and far from the hoop. Obviously, it would be much tougher to hit three-pointers on an 11-foot rim. Still, the shooting wouldn’t be as bad as one might suspect, Keating said.

“They shot poorly early in the game,” Keating said of the game he witnessed. “By the second half they shot pretty well, a very reasonable percentage. They weren’t shooting many bombs, but layups and short jumpers.”

Newell is far from a trail-blazer here. Phog Allen reportedly called for 12-foot hoops more than 70 years ago, and one of his former KU players, John Bunn, had his Stanford team hold scrimmages with the basket raised to 11 feet and 12 feet.

In light of the low-scoring NBA Finals in which the San Antonio Spurs swept the Cleveland Cavaliers, perhaps a compromise solution is in order.

Lower the hoops to nine feet, ban dunking, and do away with the three-point shot. Shooting percentages would soar, and high-scoring games would return.

Better yet, just leave it alone and revisit the topic in another 70 years, when gene doping is all the rage and 7-footers will be in the backcourt.