NBA Tests A 44-Minute Game Clock
Trending News: Basketball Games Are About To Get Shorter
Why Is This Important?
Because basketball always felt four minutes too long.
Long Story Short
The NBA announced this week that Sunday’s preseason game between the Boston Celtics and Brooklyn Nets would have four less minutes of game time. The experiment cuts a minute out of each quarter and eliminates two mandatory timeouts. It really won’t cut playing time for stars and does nothing to address the problem of too many regular-season and back-to-back games, which is the biggest complaint among players and coaches.
Long Story
The league says it is experimenting with a shorter game in order to keep players healthier and make the fan experience better. Funny, they’re not cutting ticket prices by 8.3 percent, so in the end the fans end up paying — even if is more or less a negligible amount.The NBA is the only league to play 12-minute quarters. International games are played with 10-minute quarters while college hoops has 20-minute halves.
The real move that could make fans happy is a cut in timeouts, which will help shorten games. If you’ve ever sat through an NBA game at the arena, you know there are only so many sponsored scoreboard games and kiss cams to go around.
The issue seems to have the support of league officials, with new commissioner Adam Silver getting praise for thinking outside the box. In a typical exec-speak statement, NBA president of basketball operations Rod Thorn said: "At our recent coaches' meeting, we had a discussion about the length of our games, and it was suggested that we consider experimenting with a shorter format."
It has been polarizing amongst the NBA talkers. Former Indiana Pacers guard and current TNT analyst Reggie Miller is for it:
Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban said he is against shortening the games, arguing that the NBA already has the best entertainment around. Of course, he is a billionaire who doesn’t have to pay for tickets, sits courtside and high-fives his players after big plays. That’s a bit different from the average fan who pays 100 bucks to sit half a football field away from the court.
It’s just one preseason game, so don’t expect anything to happen soon in games that actually matter. The next step would be to add it into more preseason games next year and then try it out in Developmental League.
A bigger issue is the length of the season, which is at least a month too long. Quick, count the number of NBA games you watch between opening night and Christmas Day. Now multiply by five. The number is probably still zero.
Cut the season to 70 games, start it in December and eliminate the number of back-to-back games — then we’re talking. But the league will never do that because it would take a piece of the cash pie away from everybody.
Own The Conversation
Ask The Big Question: Is an extra four minutes really going to matter? Sure, games are going too long — sometimes clocking in at over two and half hours — but nobody really watches until the final few minutes anyway. Those who do watch the entire game probably don’t mind an extra few minutes.Disrupt Your Feed: The stars of the league will still get as many minutes as they can handle. The real losers here are the guys at the end of the bench, who would see their minutes cut before the stars sit. Those are the guys without the guaranteed contracts, who know every game in the league might be their last. The battle for court time on the bottom third of rosters is fierce already, and will only get more competitive as the overall amount of minutes dwindles.
Drop This Fact: If the league implemented a 44-minute game through the entire 82-game season, it would amount to a reduction of seven full games in terms of game minutes.
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