LeBron James Wants Shorter Season, Not Shorter Games

The NBA has announced that it will experiment with shorter games during the preseason, starting with the October 19th match up between the Boston Celtics and the Brooklyn Nets. The test games will feature 11 minute quarters instead of 12 minute quarters for a total run time of 44 minutes.

While the idea of shortening games is an interesting one, big names across the league have chimed in to criticize the idea. Dallas Mavericks star Dirk Nowitzki says he thinks the NBA should look into shortening the length of the season verses the length of the game. Currently the NBA season is 82 games long, a number that Nowitski believes should sit at 60.

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LeBron James has recently offered his opinion on the subject, echoing Nowitski’s sentiments in believing that a shorter season will be of more help to players than reducing the minutes in a game. James is in favor of the 66 game total the NBA played after a season was shortened by a lockout in 2012.

James’ former coach with the Miami Heat, Eric Spoelstra, said earlier this week that he thinks “everybody agrees” that the season is too long. Despite experimenting with the shorter games this preseason, the consensus from players seems to be that this won’t help with the fatigue and injuries seen during the season. No one can know exactly how the coaches would handle it, but the guess is that stars would still play the same amount of minutes per games while role players would find their playing time reduced.

James wants to have this issue on the table when the time comes. “It’s something that we definitely will have to sit down and try to figure out,” said James via the Cleveland Plain Dealer. It’s unclear if cutting games from the NBA season is a real possibility, but it doesn’t hurt the players’ case to have the biggest name in basketball fighting for the cause.