Four minute drill

The Boston Celtics and Brooklyn Nets will play a preseason game on Sunday in a matchup of Atlantic Division rivals. Normally, the game would not mean much more than a chance for players on each team to mesh styles and get more playing time together.

But not this time.

Instead of the standard 48 minutes that NBA games have lasted since league play started, this game will span 44 minutes. The NBA is merely testing the new game time, and has no plans to make it a permanent change. Many coaches, including Mike Budenholzer of the Atlanta Hawks, Lionel Hollins of the Nets and Brad Stevens of the Celtics, told ESPN that they approved of this test and applauded the league for its open-mindedness in trying new methods to improve the game.

There were other team officials, however, who did not think that this tweak would affect anything. Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra told ESPN that he believes there are too many games in the season, and he would like to see fewer back-to-backs. Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban indicated that he hoped the games would stay at 48 minutes because the NBA is the “best entertainment in the world.”

By shortening the game, the league wants to reduce the time spent watching a game from around two hours and fifteen minutes to just two hours. This is around the time spent watching an NCAA basketball game or an international soccer game, and thus the NBA wants fans to be more incentivized to watch. Furthermore, if all 82 games only lasted 44 minutes, there would be 328 less minutes in the season, which adds up to around seven fewer games.

How would the change affect players? First, less minutes means less time on the court, which theoretically should reduce the chance of injuries. Whether this four-minute decrease per game will actually decrease the incidence of injuries is yet to be seen, but there are other issues for players. One important question is whether players’ minutes will actually change.

Knicks’ forward Carmelo Anthony and Bulls’ forward Jimmy Butler tied for the league lead with 38.7 minutes per game last season.With a 44-minute game will Derek Fisher, the Knicks’ first-year coach, actually play Anthony any less? Probably not. The bigger issue here is that dependence on the league’s stars will only rise, and the rotations will not adapt to the shorter game. Thus, the role of the bench players will inevitably decrease. If the bench players mean less, their salaries will decrease. Not only would the Players Association fight for the players, the opportunities to be a role player would decrease.

In addition, the new game time would have big consequences for TV networks. As I wrote last week, the NBA recently signed a multi-billion dollar deal with ESPN and TNT. With this new shorter game, there would be fewer mandatory timeouts, meaning fewer commercials. This would undoubtedly cause some discussion with the networks, which obviously would want to maximize their revenue with more commercial time. As Spoelstra said, he would rather the number of games per season be decreased, not necessarily the length of games. The networks would tend to agree with Spoelstra, because even though there would be fewer games, the number of nationally televised games would not necessarily change, meaning that the networks’ revenue would not be affected.

The point here is that four minutes per game, a seemingly small number, has major impacts for the league and its players. The NBA would need time to adjust, and in this sports world that is getting more impatient by the day, the league might not have that time.