With the NBA season in full swing, league commissioner Adam Silver has a few ideas in his head about how to make the game even better.
On Wednesday, Silver went on “The Dan Patrick Show” and was asked about major changes he and the league had considered making. Silver said that one thing he’d been thinking about was the possibility of dropping from 12-minute quarters to 10-minute quarters.
“I am a fan of four 10-minute quarters. I’m not sure that many others are,” Silver admitted. “It’s such a dramatic change to the game. I think something like that would have to be talked more about over time.”
Silver cited two main reasons for the potential change: consistency with international basketball and TV presentation. The NBA is the only league that plays 48-minute games; Olympic games and college basketball games, meanwhile, are 40 minutes long. (College games are played as two 20-minute halves.)
“Because this game is so global, one of the things we’d like to see over time is creating a more consistent set of rules globally around the game,” Silver said.
As for TV, he noted that the in-person fans weren’t as worried about shortening the game, but that a game that lasted just over two hours was less conducive to television.
“Putting aside what it would mean for records and things like that, I think that a two-hour format for a game is more consistent for modern television habits,” Silver said, adding later: “I don’t think most fans would be disappointed if it was a two-hour presentation.”
Another benefit would be curbing load management — the decision to rest players that has plagued the league to the point that it instituted heavy fines starting in 2023. Shortened games would mean that there would be 656 fewer minutes played during the 82-game regular season, which is the equivalent of more than 16 40-minute games removed from the season.
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Silver clarified that this was just an idea that he’d been floating, not that it was actually being considered. “It’s not quite at that level,” he said.
But Silver also said that he had brought up some of MLB’s similarly “dramatic” changes, such as the pitch clock, in NBA meetings as a touchpoint for how to alter the game. “I’m a fan of what baseball did,” Silver said. “I’m a baseball fan and I think some of those changes have really increased the engagement, the entertainment value of the game.”
Silver said that part of baseball’s appeal is the sense of tradition, but that an adherence to tradition did not affect the league’s willingness to make changes.
“If they’re able to make those changes, certainly we shouldn’t be afraid to look at changes as well,” Silver said.
Silver pointed to other, smaller changes the NBA has made over the years — altering the final two minutes of the game for fewer stoppages, adding a coach’s challenge — and bigger ones, such as adding the NBA Cup. All of these were changes made during Silver’s tenure as league commissioner, a post he took over in 2014.
Patrick raised other criticisms, such as the fact that the NBA is increasingly dependent on 3-pointers. But Silver hedged on those kinds of changes.
“I also don’t want to overreact to what we’re seeing in the game,” he said. “The game goes through transitions. I think the game is incredible right now, day in, day out. I think some of the criticism is a bit unfair.”
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