Community Shootaround: End Of NBA Games

Speaking this week from London, NBA commissioner Adam Silver said that the league is studying the end of NBA games with an eye toward speeding them up, writes Tom Hamilton of ESPN.com. The NBA, which will review the issue at the end of the season, wants to retain younger fans who “have increasingly short attention spans,” per Silver.

“It’s something that I know all of sports are looking at right now, and that is the format of the game and the length of time it takes to play the game,” Silver said. “When the last few minutes of the game take an extraordinary amount of time, sometimes it’s incredibly interesting for fans, other times it’s not. … We are going to take a fresh look at the format, specifically in the last two minutes.”

While Siver didn’t go into detail about what changes the NBA’s competition committee might consider, reducing the number of timeouts a team can use in a game – or at least in the final two minutes of a game – would be one way to go. The final minute or two of an NBA contest can also be slowed down significantly if one team is trailing by a few points and commits several intentional fouls in an effort to extend the game and make up ground.

“It’s something that we track very closely,” Silver said. “In the league office we time out every game, we know exactly how much time each possession takes and, again, we can also look at minute-by-minute ratings, so we know at what point fans are potentially tuning out as well.”

What do you think? Does the NBA need to seriously consider making changes related to timeouts, intentional fouls, or another aspect of the game to speed up the final few minutes? Or are things fine the way the are?

Jump into the comments section below to weigh in with your thoughts.

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