NBA to test 44-minute game between Brooklyn and Boston

The NBA will experiment with cutting its game times by having two teams play a shortened exhibition game early next week.

The league announced Tuesday that the Brooklyn Nets and Boston Celtics would play a 44-minute game, rather than the regular 48 minutes, Sunday at Barclays Center.

Instead of playing 12-minute quarters, the Nets and Celtics will play 11-minute quarters and there will be a reduction of timeouts in the second and fourth quarters to help speed up the flow of the game.

The idea to test a shorter game was suggested at the annual coaches meeting last month in Chicago.

“At our recent coaches meeting, we had a discussion about the length of our games, and it was suggested that we consider experimenting with a shorter format,” Rod Thorn, the NBA’s president of basketball operations, said in a statement released by the league.

“After consulting with our competition committee, we agreed to allow the Nets and Celtics to play a 44-minute preseason game in order to give us some preliminary data that will help us to further analyze game-time lengths.”

Twitter: @BA_Turner