Brian Scalabrine: Shortened quarters led to better game flow

The NBA experimented yesterday with shortening games to 44 minutes by using the Celtics versus Nets game as a guinea pig in an effort to get their games to be under 2 hours long. It worked as the game came in at a shade under 2, with minimal impact for the viewer. The NBA accomplished their goal by taking out 1 minute for each quarter, shortening half-time and eliminating two timeouts. To be honest watching the game yesterday it really didn’t feel shorter at all, I feel like the NBA can get the same effect by just eliminating a few TV timeouts throughout the game or just take out the timeouts at the end of the halves like yesterday.

Former Celtic and current CSNE commentator Brian Scalabrine felt otherwise, he broke it down on how cutting out the few minutes impacted the overall flow:


Interesting that Scal thinks it impacts the rotation for the 8th, 9th and 10th guys on the bench because that was primarily where he sat. I also don't see them sticking to this new plan of shorter quarters, unless they can find ways to make up the lost revenue from missing commercials... like perhaps ads on jerseys? We'll see how this plays out but it seems like just a way to get people to talk about a preseason basketball game.


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