The final minute of Monday night’s Memphis Grizzlies-Oklahoma City Thunder first-round Western Conference playoff game was full of excitement. The Thunder were able to tie things up with less than 20 seconds left (including an incredible 4-point play by Kevin Durant) and send the game into overtime.
It was everything a basketball fan could ask for in such a short amount of time. However, the last minute of the fourth quarter and the five-minute ovetime actually took a whopping 43 minutes and 14 seconds to play out, according to Regressing.
NBA games obviously take longer than their 48 minutes of regulation, with necessary commercial breaks and timeouts, among other things. Regressing figured out that the last minute of an NBA game usually takes an average of 5.4 minutes.
Though the Thunder blew that average out of the water almost tenfold, they couldn’t hold on in overtime and lost to the Grizzlies 111-105, tying the series at one game apiece. They meet again in Memphis on Thursday for Game 3.
