Just when you thought the American Gothic painting look-a-like who moonlights as the NBA’s head chaperone-*ahem* “commissioner” couldn’t sink any lower, he does exactly that.
Silver’s suggestion to shorten NBA quarters to 10 minutes may be the worst idea any commissioner has drummed up in the league’s history. This is the highest level of basketball in the world. It should carry the most magnitude. Part of that is having the longest games. This is the way it has always been and always should be. High school plays eight-minute quarters. College plays 10 (two 20-minute halves). Professional plays 12.
Of course, leave it to Silver to try to ruin one more thing about the sport we love, this time a fundamental change in the game’s very structure. It’s just par for his course. The culture around the league he has overseen as commissioner has been laughably weakened, and he’s covered it up with gimmicks galore that have been Band-Aid “solutions” at best.
Just take a look at the league today. Something is seriously, seriously wrong. The ratings are tanking. There are no superstars under the age of 35 who American fans care about. The league is full of selfish prima donnas, all while Silver enables it in the name of “pLaYeR eMpOwErMeNt.” Yawn. Imagine in the 1990s or 2000s if there’d been a star who played as soft of a style as James Harden. Imagine a player back then as physically fragile as Joel Embiid. Imagine one as emotionally dramatic as Jimmy Butler. You can’t. They didn’t exist. There was a standard around the league: if you want to play at the highest level of basketball in the world, then you honor the multi-million dollar contracts you sign, and you give it your all for 48 minutes, 82 nights a year. Case closed.
That standard has died under Silver, and now he is trying to lower it to accommodate the weakened atmosphere he is responsible for. Supposedly, the logic behind this move is that shortening the games would make them feel more meaningful by incentivizing players to put in more effort. It’s only because of him and his “leadership” that this problem exists in the first place.
Just take a look at the NHL. They play an 82-game season with 60-minute games and a much more physical style of play, and yet, somehow, they don’t have this issue. Sure, players are only on the ice for about one-third of each game and are on skates instead of running. Still, every game feels like it matters because the players make them matter. There is no regular-season lull in effort like there is in the NBA, and if players don’t feel like putting in that effort, they are asked to take a seat in the press box.
Clearly, this is not a “sports problem” — it’s exclusively an NBA problem. There are many things the league can do to solve it. For starters, they can adjust the schedule so that teams play more games against divisional opponents. They can return to guaranteeing each division winner a top-four seed in the playoffs. The fact that divisional rivalries mean next to nothing in the NBA today is one of the major aspects that its regular season lacks compared to other sports. It also wouldn’t hurt to have more games available on national TV, specifically marquee matchups.
The NBA doesn’t need shorter games. It doesn’t need a shorter season. It doesn’t need in-season tournaments and play-in games to spice up artificial excitement, and it doesn’t need an expanded three-point line. It needs a full-scale cultural overhaul to re-establish the standard that players at the highest level of basketball in the world are expected to play like they’re at the highest level of basketball in the world.
You know, the way they had no problems doing before Adam Silver came along.
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