Mark Cuban calls for 40-minute NBA games as 49 players are ruled out of Friday’s 10 games with injury or illness

Mark Cuban wants the NBA to play shorter games. “Shorten the game to 40 minutes. The same as almost every other basketball league in the world,” Cuban, who sold majority control of the Dallas Mavericks in 2023, wrote on X on Friday, Oct. 30. “It would reduce injuries and ad inventory. But it would increase ratings to compensate.”

He posted it as the league’s injury list keeps growing barely 10 days into the 2026-27 season. On the official injury report for Friday’s 10 games, filed at 6 p.m. Eastern, 49 players on the 20 teams in action were ruled out because of an injury or illness. That is about two and a half players per team, not counting two-way players assigned to the G League. Seven more were questionable and three doubtful.

Shorten the game to 40 minutes. The same as almost every other basketball league in the world.

It would reduce injuries and ad inventory. But it would increase ratings to compensate. https://t.co/wBwVNqNwN9

— Mark Cuban (@mcuban) October 30, 2026

What Friday’s injury report shows

Type of injury	Players ruled out Friday	Examples
Recovering from surgery or a major tear	14	Anthony Edwards (knee), Jimmy Butler (ACL), Donte DiVincenzo (Achilles), Dereck Lively II (foot)
Hamstring	8	Tyrese Haliburton, Jalen Duren, Nic Claxton, Kon Knueppel
Knee, ankle, calf or foot	18	Paolo Banchero, Kawhi Leonard, Jalen Suggs, Jaylen Brown
Back	3	Reed Sheppard, Dominick Barlow
Other, including illness	6	Egor Demin, Nate Bittle, Devin Carter
Total	49	20 teams, 10 games

Leg injuries dominate. Counting hamstrings, knees, ankles, calves, feet and Achilles tendons, 38 of the 49 players ruled out on Friday were hurt somewhere below the waist. Philadelphia, Orlando, Indiana and the Clippers each had five players out. Miami was the only team playing Friday without a single player ruled out.

Hamstrings stand out. Eight of Friday’s absences were hamstring injuries. Tyrese Haliburton, who missed all of last season after tearing his Achilles tendon in the 2025 Finals, is out at least two weeks with a mild left hamstring strain after four games back, as covered in Thursday’s injury report. The list does not include Ja Morant, whose Grade 2 left hamstring strain, suffered Thursday in his first game against Memphis, will keep him out at least four weeks, as we reported in our story on Morant’s MRI. Portland did not play Friday.

Why Cuban thinks shorter games would help

The NBA plays four 12-minute quarters. The WNBA, FIBA international games and college basketball all play 40 minutes. In replies to fans on Friday, Cuban said he does not blame the preseason. He said he liked having eight preseason games, “But I think it’s more the speed of the game and the fact that this generation of young players only played basketball growing up, leading to repetitive stress injuries.”

He also argued that less playing time would not hurt television audiences, writing that the shorter the actual playing time, “the bigger the ratings in the USA.” When a fan asked whether teams would simply play their stars the same minutes in a shorter game, Cuban answered that “it would be difficult to manage team chemistry if starters played the same minutes.” Asked about records and the history books, he pointed to baseball, which moved from 154 to 162 games decades ago and, he said, is now talking about going back.

The post Cuban was quoting came from basketball analyst Caitlin Cooper, who noted on Oct. 27 that a week into the season the league was averaging the most possessions per game, the shortest average possession, the longest average distance at which defenders pick up the ball handler and the most possessions with three or more offensive players crashing the glass of the player-tracking era. “Playing very hard for 82 games!” she wrote.

What the league has done so far

The NBA has not proposed shorter games. Changing the length of a game would need the approval of the league’s competition committee and the Board of Governors, and it would affect the national television contracts that started last season, which are built around a 48-minute game and its commercial breaks. Cuban himself conceded the change would cut ad inventory.

The league’s recent answers to load management have gone the other way: the 65-game minimum for most end-of-season awards and the player participation policy, which limits when healthy stars can sit. Those rules are already shaping decisions this season, as we explained in our look at Anthony Edwards’ knee surgery and the 65-game rule.

The season is still young. Most teams have played five or six of their 82 games. For the full daily list of who is in and out, see our Friday injury report, and follow every league-wide story on our Around the league page.