What with endless time-outs I swear it can take half an hour to play the last two-minutes. So what’s the record? Last x minutes of game time as contrasted to real time where x can be whatever you want. NBA or college. Overtime not a consideration.
Assume we are talking about NCAA basketball and no overtime periods?
The record might be difficult to look up, since your “final two minutes” is a bit arbitrary and timekeeping is usually only recorded with regard to the game clock.
Each team has four 30-second time outs and one 60-second time out, so that is potentially six minutes altogether if both teams have all their time outs going into the final two minutes (uncommon).
By comitting fouls, a team can lengthen the game very significantly. Walking down the court and taking two free throws should take easily 30-45 seconds, and if you start fouling at 2:00 you might easily get 10 fouls in if you execute very quickly on your end.
Based on the above, I would expect that to be in contention for a record you would need to be in the 12-15 minute range.
An injury can extend the time past the alloted time outs.
Another delay I forgot is official reviews to check the clock etc. These are common in tight endgame scenarios.
I have no idea what the record is but would love to see some rule changes that would put an end to this practice of constant fouling in the last couple minutes of the game.
Other delays: fault in the equipment, such as a faulty shot clock, or broken backboard; a fight breaking out; delays in resuming after a timeout (such as caused by waiting for the TV to go live).
I do know that the final 1.0 seconds of the last regular season matchup between Ohio State and Michigan state took 14 minutes to play. I went back on my DVR and timed it. Not sure how long the previous minute or two took, but I was ready to throw my remote through the TV. And people wonder why I’m only a very casual basketball watcher.
Yeah, that’s what makes it perfect for GQ.
I think the answer might be “We don’t know, because the game isn’t over yet”
What would such a rule change look like? Start ejecting player for intentionally fouling? Award three or maybe four FTs in the event of such a foul? Fine the coach? 
This is one of the reasons I’ve always enjoyed hockey. The final five minutes takes about five minutes to play.
It wouldn’t necessarily have to be a rule change. Many end-game intentional fouls are very incidental and would be “no-calls” in other situations. The officials should simply swallow their whistles on these plays and only call a foul where the defender makes a play on the ball (more difficult to execute in .5 seconds) or else call a flagrant foul (offense retains possession after FTs).
The problem is that if you are down by 4 with 15 seconds left, you would still foul even under those enhanced rules. The other team will just run out the clock otherwise. Better to foul, give them 2 shots and try to steal the inbounds pass.
They did for a while. ANY foul in the last two minutes was an intentional foul so the team got 2 foul shots AND the ball.
That rule didn’t last long.
According to this, over ten minutes.
It’s the main reason I can’t stand watching NBA games. An entire 4 quarters of basketball come to a screeching halt for the last 60 seconds.
I’d change the rules to allow no timeouts in the last minute and fouls would be an automatic 2 points rather than having to take the shots.
Delays due to fans prematurely rushing the court happen in NCAA ball as well. I wonder if that’s what happened in the game Jman mentioned?
Moved to the Game Room from GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator