NBA News: NBA May Shorten Games To Accommodate Millennials’ “Short Attention Spans”

In the latest NBA news, in a press conference this past Thursday (following the Denver Nuggets’ complete dismantling of the Indiana Pacers by a box score of 140-112), NBA Commissioner Adam Silver noted that the league as a whole monitors the end of games “very closely,” according to USA TODAY. Furthermore, Commissioner Adam Silver also said that the NBA’s competition committee would take a “fresh look” at game length following the end of the 2016/2017 regular season.

While the NBA is always looking for new ways to improve officiating, “flopping,” and other elements that at times detract from the overall game experience, this new proposition of examining the length of games (particularly the end of contests) has been brought to the forefront on account of millennial viewers (and what Commissioner Adam Silver referred to as their “short attention spans” during said press conference).

The USA TODAY article also cites a 2015 study by Microsoft that concluded that in the digital age of social media and 140 characters or less, our collective attention span is now worse than that of a goldfish.

From that perspective, the proposed change seems plausible (somewhat). In the modern NBA game, the end of regulation is fraught with timeouts, commercial breaks, and the nitty-gritty of X’s and O’s as both coaches play chess with their roster of players. When you factor in the substitution of those players, free throws, and said time-outs, an NBA regulation game that is supposed to last 2.5 hours often pushes 3 (and that’s not even factoring in overtime sessions with some contests extended by as much as 3-4 sessions of extra time). When 140 characters or less turns into 140 minutes or more, some viewers are likely to get antsy. Added to this, there are also blow-out NBA games to consider. When one team is up by 20 or more points with only a few minutes to go, it’s what many refer to as “garbage time.”

There is another side to this argument, however. While some millennials and other NBA viewers may see an extended game as a negative, there are those who would see that same extension as a positive. That chess match is just what some fans live for (along with the drama and suspense that comes with it).

At a most basic level, fans attending an NBA game in person could see the extra time as a way to truly get their money’s worth. The extra time could also be a blessing and a curse (depending on which team you’re rooting for). There is no question that the end of games is stressful. You are either watching your team climbing out of the hole en route to a win, or falling further back into the hole, and suffering a loss. While this may take a long time to play out in both real-time and game time, it’s exactly these conditions that set up one of the most profound elements in all of basketball, which is the last second shot.

All of the drama, all of the suspense, and all of the extra time can sometimes come down to one final shot to win it all. While it may take a long and winding emotional road to get there, the argument can be made that there is no greater moment than those closing seconds when everything is on the line, and every eye is glued to the final play. This does require an attention span longer than eight seconds to appreciate, and this does require physical, emotional, and even psychological investment, but when the clock winds down to zero, and the team you’re rooting for puts up a last-second shot to win it all that finds the bottom of the net; that’s the stuff that sports, dreams, and legends are made of.

[Featured Image by Dan Mullan/Getty Images]