NEW YORK — Jared Sullinger took a glance at the game clock and thought something must be wrong. With fewer than six minutes left in the first quarter, he was still in the game.
There was a good reason he hadn’t been subbed out yet, though.
In an experimental 44-minute preseason game, Sullinger had 21 points and 19 rebounds to help the Boston Celtics beat the Brooklyn Nets 95-90 on Sunday.
“I’m so used to seeing 12 (minutes) and I looked up and I saw 5-something on the clock. I’m like, man, normally I come out at the 7-minute mark,” Sullinger said. “They said, ‘No, it’s an 11-minute (quarter).’ So that explains everything.”
Jeff Green added 14 points for Boston (4-3), hardly deterred by playing 4 minutes fewer than a normal NBA game.
Backup point guard Jarrett Jack and reserve center Jerome Jordan each had 17 points for the Nets (2-1).
The idea of a shortened game arose during the NBA coaches’ offseason meeting as a way to analyze and compare the flow of the game with that of the league-standard 48 minutes.
“You noticed it a little bit when you’re subbing at the start of quarters, but I thought the flow with the one less timeout was actually a little bit better in the second and fourth,” Celtics coach Brad Stevens said. “I didn’t notice it other than that.”
While an average game takes 2 hours, 15 minutes, the game Saturday took 1 hour, 58 minutes. Instead of the customary 12-minute quarters, Sunday’s game featured four 11-minute periods along with a reduction of mandatory timeouts from three to two during the second and fourth quarters.
The opening quarter was played in 19 minutes, the second in 29 minutes, and the third and fourth in 25 minutes each.
“I’m looking at the clock and it’s 7 or 6 (minutes remaining) on the clock and I have to get myself back because only 5 minutes have gone off if it says 6 on the clock,” Stevens said. “That’s a little bit different, but I had it mapped out so I kind of knew what I was going to do.”
Brooklyn power forward Kevin Garnett sat out against his former team because of a stomach virus.
Brooklyn point guard Deron Williams, who played 25 minutes but was rested for the entire fourth quarter, couldn’t really pinpoint the effect the shortened game had after it was completed in under 2 hours.
“It’s really hard to tell a minute a quarter (and) 4 minutes a game. When you’re out there in real time, you’re not really thinking about it,” said Williams, who played just more than nine minutes in the second quarter and a little less than nine in the third.