The NBA Solves the Problem of Quarters Divisible by Four

They played a very special basketball game a couple of nights ago. How special?  Each quarter was 11 minutes long!  I know, wow, what great mind thought of that!  The evil geniuses at NBA Inc., that’s who.

Was there such a hue and cry for shorter basketball games that this bold experiment was necessary?  Not really.  People mostly complain about baseball games lasting too long, and football can get a little long, but few people were writing angry letters to Sports Illustrated about the length of basketball games. So what does shortening a games from 48 minutes to 44 minutes accomplish?

Well, over the course of the very long NBA season (basketball, which was invented as a winter sport to be played indoors when the weather was bad, now has its season end in late June) a lot of very valuable players get injured.  Derek Rose has been out two years; Kevin Durant has a stress fracture in his foot; that sort of thing.  Shortening a game by 4 minutes would shorten the overall season by 328 minutes (82 times 4) or the equivalent of nearly seven games, not even factoring in the interminable playoffs.

The genius if this plan is this—if the NBA spared its player’s seven games worth of stress by shortening the season by seven games, then each team could sell 3 or 4 fewer season tickets, costing owners money in lost revenues from tickets and concessions.  Owners might be tempted to ask players for an adjustment on their contracts, paying them 8.3% less than they had agreed to. The television networks which just signed a hefty contract with the NBA might want some of their billions back for having 8.3% fewer games to broadcast.

But shaving a mere 4 minutes off each game saves the delicate balance.  Owners keep their revenues, players keep their salaries, and networks have the same number of games to air. The only person getting screwed is the fan, who gets 8.3 less product for his entertainment dollar. And the athlete who might have a shot at setting some lifetime statistical record who now won’t because his seasons will be 8.3% shorter; John Stockton’s lifetime assist record and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s scoring records are safe.

Leave it to sports team owners to face a problem with an obvious answer (players break down during a long season; shortening the season by seven or eight games) and find another answer that lets them keep all their money. The next thing you know they’ll be selling small beers for the price of a large; oh wait, they've done that already.