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An NBA press release reveals that the league will experiment with shortening certain preseason games from 48 minutes to 44.
"At our recent coaches' meeting, we had a discussion about the length of our games, and it was suggested that we consider experimenting with a shorter format," said NBA President, Basketball Operations Rod Thorn. "After consulting with our Competition Committee, we agreed to allow the Nets and Celtics to play a 44-minute preseason game in order to give us some preliminary data that will help us to further analyze game-time lengths."
Application of the experimental 44-minute game will involve quarters being reduced from their typical 12 minutes each to 11 and a reduction in mandatory timeouts in the second and fourth quarters.
SBNation.com elaborates on the story.
No word yet whether the fine folks at Basketball Reference are scrambling to change their "per-36-minute" stats to "per-35.25".