Okay, so the other day, I was watching an NBA game with a buddy, and we got into this whole debate about how long the games actually are. I mean, you see “48 minutes” tossed around, but anyone who’s watched a game knows it takes way longer than that. So, I decided to do a little digging myself.
My Starting Point
First, I wanted to know the official game time. It’s pretty straightforward, everyone says NBA games are 48 minutes long, divided into four quarters of 12 minutes * part’s easy, I checked from differnt way.
The Actual Timing Process
- I grabbed my phone and started a stopwatch at the tip-off.
- I only paused it during actual gameplay stoppages, like timeouts, fouls, and halftime.
- I didn’t stop for the little breaks between quarters, just the major ones.
- I watched a regular season game online. Just a random one, not an overtime thriller or anything.
What I found
So after finishing watching the game, I found the stopwatch ran for over two hours! Way longer than I expected at the beginning, from start to finish it can be over two and a half hours.
I mean, there are all these timeouts, the halftime break is pretty long, and then you have fouls, reviews, and sometimes even weird delays.I learned that there are a few of reasons to explain why a game might go on so long.
