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Euroleague, FIBA, NCAA, and WNBA video games are all 40 minutes lengthy. Why is the NBA 48 minutes?
Adam Silver posed that question during an interview, and the downstream ramifications are fascinating. Definitely, 10-minute quarters would take advantage of important impression. The NBA may get near its desired two-hour broadcast window, and as somebody always battling to remain up-to-date on 30 totally different groups, I’d personally welcome a faster sport. Maybe the diminished minutes’ load would even cut back celebrity accidents, arguably the gravest risk to league reputation.
However there are many subtler knock-on results. Most NBA data would change into unobtainable (though the NBA has by no means been fairly as beholden to data because the MLB, the chase nonetheless creates pleasure!). Moreover, followers intrinsically perceive what “good” per-game stats are, constructed upon many years of publicity and expertise. They’d have to recalibrate their expectations, which can trigger some friction.
Maybe most worryingly, nonetheless, is what would happen to players and rosters. If starters usually play 30-35 minutes per sport right now, they seemingly wouldn’t see a lot of a discount in enjoying time. Nonetheless, reserves averaging 18 minutes per sport may see their minutes minimize by 30 % or extra, which might replicate of their corresponding paychecks. Backups matter much less in the event that they play much less, and if starters play extra, there could be much less variance, and fewer night-to-night parity.
Theoretically, shorter video games may even result in smaller rosters general – 10 lively gamers as a substitute of 12, for instance, very conveniently saving the homeowners a boatload of cash.
Shortening video games would remedy one drawback however introduce many extra.
For extra from Mike Shearer, try his irreverent weblog Basketball Poetry, the place he deep-dives the NBA a number of instances per week.
