Sudden death: What are the new overtime rules in the NBA Summer League 2022?

The newest, youngest NBA players and future stars get their first chance to shine in an NBA uniform during the Summer League, so what better place to try the newest rules and ideas that might perhaps get to change the game in the future. The rookies and sophomores battling in Las Vegas right now will be the first to experience how sudden death NBA basketball is played.

Sudden death, the new overtime

The NBA has had the same overtime system, a five-minute period that repeats itself until the teams have broken the deadlock, for over 70 years now, with a 1951 game between the Indianapolis Olympians and the Rochester Royals setting the record with 6 overtimes in a 75-73 contest. The only other system the NBA has experimented with as a way of finishing games has been the Elam Ending for the past three All-Star games, setting a number of points to be reached once the game is in its fourth quarter. This summer, we are getting a new way to decide tied games, the wildest so far.

The game is played under the usual rules for the first 48 minutes, but if the teams get to the end of the fourth quarter with the same score they enter a new two-minute period to break the tie. Once this couple of minutes are gone, the NBA Summer League goes into sudden death mode, as whoever scores first wins the game. This makes every action decisive and thrilling while shortening games that have already gone on for a long time.

Crazy first sudden death with Murray and Banchero

We got our first glimpse of this new kind of basketball yesterday as the Sacramento Kings faced the Orlando Magic in the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas. The duel between Magic’s number-one pick Paolo Banchero and Kings’ number-four Keegan Murray delivered as the Kings erased a 6-point deficit on a whim to send it to the two-minute overtime.

After they could not break the tie, it was sudden death time, with Paolo Banchero emerging as the hero with a rejection to stop the Kings’ first game winning attempt and a late dish to Emmanuel Terry to clinch the win for Orlando. The Italo-American top pick finished the game with 23 points, 6 rebounds, 6 assists and 4 steals, outlasting Keegan Murray’s 20 points and 9 rebounds performance.

With many more games to come in the next few days of the NBA Las Vegas Summer League, the sudden death format will get more chances to shine and for fans to see if this is something they would like to see more of, maybe even in actual NBA games.