Every year there are some sort of rule changes approved by the NBA’s competition committee, and this year they’re a little more drastic than most as the NBA seeks to fix the problem of games slowing down to a crawl at the end. It’s long been a running joke that the last two minutes of an NBA game can go on for an eternity and as such the NBA has implemented the following rules to start this upcoming season:

In addition, the NBA will also mandate that halftime will last exactly 15 minutes, starting as soon as the whistle blows to end the first half, and any team that isn’t ready when that 15 minutes is up will be assessed a delay of game warning.

As for other improvements to the game, Adam Silver announced that the season itself would start October 17th, almost two weeks earlier than last season. That should help spread out games enough where teams don’t have to play as many back to backs. The trade deadline was also moved up to the Thursday ten days before the All-Star game and not the Thursday after the All-Star game, which this year is February 10th. So basically no more DeMarcus Cousins situations going forward, and teams will be able to get going with their new rosters immediately after the break.

These types of changes all seem well thought out and should improve the flow of games. It’s interesting that there wasn’t anything specifically done by the NBA with regards to punishing teams taking advantage of “resting” players after it was such a hot button issue last year, but moving the season start date up hopefully mitigates that practice, although I’m sure we’ll see the NBA take a tougher stance if teams continue to abuse the privilege.