Silver: NBA will take 'fresh look' at game length at end of season

If NBA commissioner Adam Silver can find a way to reduce the length of games, especially during the final minutes when timeouts and free throws can drag things out, he's interested in doing so.

"My sense is we are going to be taking a fresh look at the end of the season," Silver said Thursday prior to the Pacers-Nuggets game in London. "It's something we track very closely. In the league office, we time out every game, we know exactly how much each possession takes, and again, we can also look at minute-by-minute ratings, so we know at one point when fans are potentially tuning out, as well."

The issue is not that games are too long at 48 minutes with four 12-minute quarters, but that particular portions consume a great deal of time, causing fans at home to get frustrated and lose interest.

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Silver has gone on the record saying it's unlikely the league would change the number of minutes. He did experiment during the 2014-15 preseason by having the Boston Celtics and Brooklyn Nets compete in a 44-minute outing, with two mandatory television timeouts removed during the second and fourth quarters.