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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 influence. The NBA may get near its desired two-hour broadcast window, and as somebody always battling to remain up-to-date on 30 completely different groups, I’d personally welcome a faster recreation. Maybe the decreased minutes’ load would even scale back celebrity accidents, arguably the gravest menace to league recognition.
However there are many subtler knock-on results. Most NBA information would turn out to be unobtainable (though the NBA has by no means been fairly as beholden to information 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 must 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 recreation at the moment, they probably wouldn’t see a lot of a discount in taking part in time. Nevertheless, reserves averaging 18 minutes per recreation may see their minutes minimize by 30 % or extra, which might mirror of their corresponding paychecks. Backups matter much less in the event that they play much less, and if starters play extra, there can be much less variance, and fewer night-to-night parity.
Theoretically, shorter video games may even result in smaller rosters general – 10 energetic 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 occasions per week.
