During the offseason, NBA commissioner Adam Silver and the league’s competition committee made a subtle rule change to reduce the number of timeouts in a game, especially late in the fourth quarter.
The NBA found a way to make crunch time even more exciting: fewer timeouts
The new rule has made the end of games so much more fun.
Bob Donnan-USA TODAY Sports
Two weeks into the regular season, the change has provided some of the more exciting end-of-game finishes we’ve seen in early-season games.
“[Previous changes] in essence quietly got the length of our game down from two hours and 23 minutes to about two hours and 15 minutes, so we are pretty happy with the length of the game,” Silver said in a news conference in mid-July. “[With this latest rules change] we were more focused on the pace and flow of the game and what we heard from our fans and many of our teams, what we heard was that the end of the games in particular were too choppy.”
So what’s the rule change?
Silver wanted to improve the flow of play at the end of games. His proposal to the Board of Governors was to slash the total number of available timeouts per game from 18 to 14, or from nine to seven timeouts per team, per game. Silver also removed the distinction between “full” and “20-second” timeouts, making all timeouts 75 seconds long.
There is no restriction on how many timeouts can be used in a half.
But that wasn’t all. Silver’s proposal, which passed unanimously through the league’s Competition Committee, also cut the maximum number of end-of-the-game timeouts available. In past seasons, if a team didn’t blow through their timeouts earlier in the game, they had three at their disposal in the last three minutes of regulation.
Now, after the rule change, they get only two timeouts in the final three minutes of the fourth quarter — and that’s if they didn’t get trigger-happy with them earlier in the game.
This makes the ends of games much more seamless
Excessive timeouts are annoying, especially at the end of the game. Now, coaches and players have to be incredibly strategic with how they use their timeouts, or it could be curtains for their late-game chances. Players now have to make more on-the-fly decisions rather than relying on a coach to draw up the perfect play every time.
That leads to more chaotic — and exciting — basketball that flows more like the first 46 minutes instead of a station-to-station football or baseball game.
The best example of this rule change working came on Oct. 28. The Mavericks almost came back from down double-digits in the fourth quarter, but lost to the 76ers by two points. That game had only one stoppage in the final 40 seconds and took viewers on an emotional roller coaster.
Down five, the Mavericks inbounded for a quick Harrison Barnes three that cut the lead to two.
On the ensuing play, Philadelphia didn’t call a timeout and worked the ball into Joel Embiid, who punished Barnes on a switch for a layup. That was a better play than Brett Brown could have drawn up.
With no timeouts left, Dallas raced the ball up the floor and got Barnes another three before the 76ers could set their defense.
That led to a frantic final eight seconds that never would have occurred in the past. Jerryd Bayless missed the second of two free throws, and rather than call timeout, Yogi Ferrell grabbed the rebound and raced coast to coast into the frontcourt. As he weaved through Philly’s scrambling defense, he picked up speed and drove past Robert Covington to the front of the rim, drawing a foul on Timothe Luwawu-Cabarrot with 0.2 seconds left.
But then Ferrell missed the first free throw, forcing him to miss the second on purpose and hope for a tip-in. The two benches shouted instructions, but there was no timeout. Ferrell missed long and Nerlens Noel almost came up with the miracle tip-in.
Here’s the whole thing. Again: there was only one stoppage of play.
Those Mavericks threes may have never been there if timeouts were called late down the stretch. That amazing coast-to-coast drive by Ferrell wouldn’t have happened if Rick Carlisle had an extra timeout to draw up a play. Not having those play stoppages forced both team to think on their feet in real time instead of having time to refocus on the sidelines. That turned what would have been an endless parade of pointless free throws and stoppages into one of the most entertaining games of the season.
It’s early in the season, but this seems to be another notch in the win column for Adam Silver’s administration.
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