Trail Blazers' Damian Lillard Agrees With Jeff Van Gundy on Eliminating Halftime
Portland Trail Blazers point guard and seven-time All-NBA player Damian Lillard agrees with ESPN NBA analyst Jeff Van Gundy that halftime needs to either be eliminated or significantly shortened.
Van Gundy made his remarks in an interview with The Athletic's Richard Deitsch, who asked the former New York Knicks and Houston Rockets head coach how he would speed up NBA games.
Regarding halftime in particular, Van Gundy had this to say:
"Then I would eliminate halftime. I think halftime is the biggest waste of time. Or I'd reduce it to five minutes so you could go to the bathroom and come back out. This whole idea of what goes on at halftime I think is so misunderstood. It's a lot of either praising what just happened or correcting. But you could do that in two minutes out by the bench in an elongated timeout."
Van Gundy's remarks come amid Major League Baseball's efforts to significantly shorten games, primarily via the pitch clock. Per Baseball-Reference, games have dropped from three hours and six minutes in 2022 to two hours and 39 minutes in 2023.
NBA regular-season games have a tendency to drag on, especially at the end of fourth quarter as timeouts and fouls accumulate. To combat that, Ball State Professor Nick Elam created the Elam Ending, which sees a winner declared after hitting a target score. It's been used in the NBA All-Star Game as well as The Basketball Tournament.
Van Gundy had some other ideas, including eliminating free throws until the last four minutes and awarding points after shooting fouls instead.
The ex-coach appears to have an important backer on the halftime idea, at least. We'll see if the NBA decides to follow MLB's suit to reduce game time, but for now, the Association is focused on the Finals, which start Thursday when the Denver Nuggets host the Miami Heat.
