Commissioner Adam Silver raised the idea of the NBA going to 10-minute quarters as opposed to 12 minutes. Should that happen?
There are some questions that need answers around the league. From Adam Silver’s trial balloon, to All-Star omissions that don’t truly feel like snubs, to Bronny James bringing out all the extreme views, hopefully we cut through the noise with less than a week before the trade deadline buzzer goes off. This week in Questions That Need Answers:
There are multiple things at work here. First, Silver was responding to a question from radio host Dan Patrick, who asked about the “wildest” change he would consider. Now, Silver did say he is a “fan” of 10-minute quarters and talked about the international game having it that way, but there’s nothing he said that suggests anything imminent is coming to the competition committee for a vote — which I hope would get struck down by Thor’s hammer because it’s ridiculous.
Silver is not the orator that his predecessor, the late David Stern, was, but he can be conversational. The problem is he’s speaking as if his words won’t be taken seriously by the masses, especially those who are looking to find something, anything, wrong with the game. It’s catnip to discuss, and it’s even more seductive to get a commissioner to play in the mud with the folks who have nothing but negatives to say about the game.
The issue in the context of the statement, referencing the international game, is the NBA is supposed to be leading, not following.
If someone could criticize the league, it’s that the NBA doesn’t appear to have a North Star. What is its ethos? By playing to the whims of a very fickle fan base, one the NBA seems to have to constantly court, it looks like you don’t know what to expect as far as where the game is going.
It’s like the scene in “Coming to America” where Eddie Murphy’s pre-selected bride was asked, “Well, what do you like?” And the woman, played by Vanessa Bell Calloway, responded, “Whatever you like.” And that was the answer for every question he then asked, until he told her to bark like a dog and she obliged, in one of the film’s classic moments.
Suggesting 10-minute quarters opens the door to the idea that the game is too long, which plays into the TikTok nature of today’s fans. It’s one thing to meet fans where they are, it’s another to lean full into the short attention span of the fans — just because baseball did it with a pitch clock or football went to “dynamic kickoffs.”
It’s not that tweaking and staying ahead of the curve is out of the question, the rules should reflect some level of the evolution of sport. But even the notion of messing with the structural integrity of the game shouldn’t be uttered, even jokingly.
Young’s shooting has dipped to 40% and his 3-point shooting is at 34%. Those numbers are well below his career marks and his field-goal shooting is a career worst. The advanced stats aren’t too kind to him, either, which doesn’t give him much of a case to be among the 24 best who’ll play in the All-Star Game. He has moments that are electrifying, like rolling the dice at Madison Square Garden, but the nightly showings don’t support consistency or efficiency from him.
Knicks killer Reggie Miller is a Hall of Famer but only played in five All-Star games in 18 years. The position was crowded during his era and that seems to be the case for Young with the guards in the East, and even Tyrese Maxey might’ve been taken over him among the players who aren’t All-Stars.
