Joe Mazzulla isn’t fazed by the drastic proposal.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver made headlines on Wednesday when he suggested that he would be open to the league cutting down game times and going to a 10-minute quarter format. Silver pointed at other basketball leagues and formats, such as college basketball, the WNBA, and FIBA basketball that all have 40-minute, two hour games. Instead, the NBA plays the extra two minutes in each quarter and has two-and-a-half hour contests.
Silver’s proposal drew a plethora of reactions from around the country, both good and bad. After the Boston Celtics knocked off the Chicago Bulls 122-100 on Wednesday night, Celtics head coach Joe Mazzulla said that he doesn’t really care how long the games are, via Daniel Donabedian of ClutchPoints.
“I don’t care. Whatever you gotta do. Just play the game,” Mazzulla said after the game, per Donabedian.
Mazzulla has taken a similar approach to all kinds of things at his press conferences after Celtics games this season, so it should be no surprise that he’s completely locked in on his team and what it need to do next.
The obvious hangup to Silver’s suggestion is what it would do statistically around the league. The NBA’s single-season and single-game records would almost certainly never be touched ever again, and it would be very difficult for anyone to catch up in career records as well. The league’s new feats and superstars would be watered down because of the limited playing time, which is hard to envision the players getting behind.
However, making the game shorter has drastically helped in baseball, and golf is looking at measures to do the same. However, it’s unclear whether the length of the game is even an issue for fans in the NBA, so it seems like this move would be years away if it ends up happening. Even if the league wants it to get done, it’s hard to see the players signing off on that.
Mazzulla’s laser-focus on the Celtics paid off on Wednesday night, as his team put on a very impressive show to get back in the win column after a tough loss on Monday night. Big man Kristaps Porzingis had a huge first half with 26 points, and the Celtics never looked back in a game that was never in doubt right from the start.