Adam Silver Wants To Shorten NBA Quarters To 10 Minutes, Benefitting Players and Broadcasters

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said Wednesday that he was a “fan” of shortening the league’s quarters from 12 minutes to 10 minutes. Though the change would undermine the NBA’s traditions and record-keeping, Silver noted that it would also be an intuitive fix to one of the league’s most pressing issues.

“Incidentally, if you went to a 40-minute game, with the minutes around load management and resting, it would be the equivalent of — I don’t know the exact math — taking like 15 games off the season,” Silver said on The Dan Patrick Show Wednesday. “And I don’t think most fans would be disappointed if it was a two-hour presentation instead of a — our game is actually about two hours and 15 minutes now.”

The commissioner has earned a reputation for bucking trends in his decade-long tenure, respecting the league’s history while embracing new ideas to maintain relevance. The NBA Cup, the league’s new in-season tournament, was Silver’s initiative to boost regular season ratings. Limiting end-of-season awards to players who compete in a certain number of games was another attempt to convince teams to avoid excessive load management.

These ideas, while novel and unfamiliar for the league, were also baked into the NBA’s existing spirit and structure. Star players are supposed to compete every night; the regular season is supposed to mean something. In this sense, many of Silver’s splashiest rule changes were actually intended to uphold the league’s traditions.

Shortening quarters, on the other hand, would be a massive departure, and therefore a harder sell for owners and other officials. Silver pointed out that most leagues in the world now play 10-minute quarters and that a two-hour format would be better suited to television broadcasting, but this could only further solidify NBA traditionalists in their way of thinking.

The commissioner’s office has already demonstrated that it is willing to consider anything to improve the product for modern viewers. Those efforts have yielded mixed results to this point, as many still argue that load management and low effort are harming the league’s product in the regular season. As persistent as ever, Silver is still looking for new breakthroughs.