For years I've been a proponent of increasing the size of (American) football and basketball courts. The participants are so much larger/faster/stronger now than when these sports were originally envisioned that larger playing areas would seem a "back to our roots" move. And, I'll hypothesize that less player congestion would lead to reduced injuries.
Not to get too far afield, but I'm not sure how this would reduce injuries. The object in football is still for the defender to hit the offensive player and tackle him. A larger field might lead to slightly fewer hits and somewhat more scoring (since the offensive player would have more room to try to avoid the defender and the defender more area to cover), but the hits that would occur in the open field would be at least at vicious, maybe more, because the players would have the chance to built up more speed. Also, a lot of the worst injuries in football happen in the scrum at or near the line of scrimmage, on defensive linemen hitting a quarterback (Taylor and Theisman), or on crossing patterns over the middle where a receiver is a sitting duck for a hard hit. I don't think a larger field would affect those. Similarly in basketball, most of the worst injuries seem to occur in the scrum for rebounds under the hoop of folks driving the lane. Even on a bigger court, this congested area of the court would be no less congested and the contact opportunities would be very similar. And the injury that occurred to Ware likely wouldn't have been affected - the guy was shooting a three and he was running and jumping to try to disrupt it and just landed badly. Same thing would have happened on a larger court - the shooting range isn't going to get much more than it is now, so I don't think it adds to the opportunity to get an open shot...
Interesting thought, but I don't think it would help much, if at all. I think bigger, faster, stronger athletes just raise the stakes regardless. One thing I think COULD work would be to make football players play with minimal padding, including no facemasks and eiher minimal helmets (like the old leather ones) or no helmets at all. This would discourage these guys from using their bodies, and their heads in particular, as battering rams. Having played in high school, I can tell you that's what we did ALL THE TIME, sometimes intentionally, often not - when you're going full speed and have to hit someone, its just instinctively a very effective way to do it. Fortunately, we were too small, slow, and weak to do each other all that much harm, but that's less and less the case even with high school athletes today, let alone college and pro jocks. I think if these guys had less gladiator like protection, the game might be a lot less rough. You'd still have some busted up knees in the area of the line of scrimmage, but a lot fewer concussions and head impacts.
-Ray