Dallas Mavericks minority owner Mark Cuban proposed shortening an NBA game to 40 minutes to mitigate the many injuries the league has seen in the first week of the 2026-27 season.
In a tweet on Friday, Cuban also explained the negative effects of a shorter NBA game, and a potential benefit, beyond injury reduction.
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“Shorten the game to 40 minutes,” Cuban said. “The same as almost every other basketball league in the world. It would reduce injuries and ad inventory. But it would increase ratings to compensate.”
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Many social media users expressed their take on Cuban’s proposal.
“How come the (Michael) Jordan era did not get as (many) injuries?” one fan tweeted.
“Then you better also reduce ticket prices by 17%,” another fan said.
“(Two minutes) less each quarter would not do anything. So much of this is fluke stuff early in quarters. It’s not like they all happen in the last 2 min of quarters. Good idea, but let’s be real,” a fan commented.
“The season just started, and there are injuries everywhere. It’s obviously not the amount of games or minutes,” one fan wrote.
Some pundits also replied to Cuban’s tweet, offering their views.
“Just because games are 8 minutes less doesn’t mean ACL or Achilles or hamstrings won’t pop. … NBA-wise, teams shouldn’t be playing 5 games in 7 days, and we shouldn’t have back-to-backs. Keep it at 48 minutes, keep it at 82 games on the year, and just spread it out where a team will play a max of 3-4 games a week,” ClutchPoints’ Brett Siegel tweeted.
“YES! I’ve been preaching this. You cut mileage without cutting games. Feels like a win-win for players and owners. Also, the faster quarters can be quite entertaining from a product perspective,” Sportsnet’s Zulfi Sheikh wrote.
Cuban owned the Mavericks from 2000 to 2023, leading the franchise to its first championship in 2011. In December 2023, he sold his majority stake to the Adelson and Dumont families at a $3.5 billion valuation. ESPN reported that he retained a 27% stake in the franchise.
Mark Cuban defends his proposal for shorter games
NBA reporter Caitlin Cooper, who was quote-tweeted by Mark Cuban on Friday, raised a query about the playing time between stars and role players in a 40-minute game.
“Genuine question: Do you think teams would still play their stars similar minutes at the risk of devaluing role players and benches?” Cooper wrote.
Cuban replied:
“Some would. But it would be difficult to manage team chemistry if starters played the same minutes.”
Cuban also defended his claim that his proposal would increase ratings, saying that “the shorter the actual playing time, the bigger the ratings in the USA.”
On Wednesday, NBA journalist Keerthika Uthayakumar reported that 79 players were listed on the injury reports for the 12 games that night. The figure amounts to about 15% of all the players in the league.
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Edited by Kim Daniel Rubinos
