Time is on everyone’s mind.
I’m flattered that you’re taking some of yours to read this column. So I’ll get right to my point.
The National Basketball Association doesn’t need to shorten its season. But a few changes should be made to the game itself in a culture saturated with entertainment options.
If you improve the quality, quantity won’t be such an issue.
Time always seems to go by too fast, unless you’re talking about pro sports. Then many feel it doesn’t go by fast enough.
That’s why as sure as the changing leaves of autumn, we hear the yearly groans about postseason baseball games taking four hours.
That’s why the NBA is tinkering with the idea of shortening its games by four minutes. All stars, such as LeBron James and Dirk Nowitzki have gone further, urging a 60-game regular season instead of 82.
Let’s scrap the idea of shortening seasons for now. Why? Team owners won’t allow it.
Sports are a commodity. Billion-dollar television-rights deals are negotiated based on a certain amount of product (games) being available. Lessen the product, lessen the profit.
But if you boost the quality of the product, everyone wins. The 44-minute game experiment, down from its current 48 minutes, is a start.
This experiment, which will debut today in a preseason game between Brooklyn and Boston, isn’t so much about lessening the burden on players. That wear-and-tear comes more from grueling road-trips, where three games in four nights coupled with overnight travel is common.
It’s more about boosting entertainment appeal by putting the game in a tidy two-hour package.
With the demise of isolation, one-on-one offenses, an NBA game is an exciting up-tempo experience. But because of mandatory timeouts, it can (pause) become (pause) a painful (pause) exercise (pause) in patience.
Aside from the first six minutes of each half, mandatory timeouts occur at roughly three-minute intervals. Still, it’s common for teams to carry two full timeouts and a 20-second timeout into the final minutes. In overtime, each team gets three full timeouts.
And you can bet coaches will use every last one of them, especially in a close game.
The 44-minute game would eliminate one mandatory timeout per half. That will shave an additional 200 seconds off a game’s duration. With courtside and on-screen advertising, sponsors still have many options for getting eyes on their product. And with DVRs, who watches commercials anymore?
Let’s take it a step further. Give coaches one full and one 20-second timeout in the last two minutes of a game, and have those be the only ones they can call.
The home team makes a rally. The noise in the arena reaches a crescendo. So let’s stop the game? Talk about a buzzkill.
Visiting coaches want to take a crowd out of the game, especially when their team is reeling. But it’s more entertaining for viewers when the crowd IS a factor. The league should embrace that.
Plus, I’d rather see Damian Lillard shut up Golden State’s crowd with a rally-ending 3-pointer instead of Terry Stotts calling a timeout.
Time flies when you’re having fun, we’re told. Make the game more fun and nobody will mind how long it takes.
