NBA Timeout Rules: How Many, How Long and Who Can Call

At 2:59 of every quarter of every NBA game, if nobody has asked for a stoppage since the last one, the official scorer takes it anyway. The horn sounds at the next dead ball, both teams walk to their benches, and one of them is charged with a timeout its coach never requested. That is the least understood piece of Rule 5, Section VI, and it explains why the number on the scoreboard beside a team's name drops faster than its coach's signals would suggest.

The headline figures are these. Each team has seven timeouts in regulation. A team timeout lasts 75 seconds. No team may use more than four in the fourth quarter, and each is cut to two once the clock passes three minutes in that quarter. Overtime brings two more apiece, per period. Any player on the floor or the head coach may ask for one, and only when their team has the ball or the ball is dead.

The NBA timeout allowance: seven a team, and the limits that tighten late

The rulebook opens with a sentence of three parts. "Each team is entitled to seven (7) charged timeouts during regulation play. Each team is limited to no more than four (4) timeouts in the fourth period. Each team will be limited to two (2) team timeouts after the later of (i) the three-minute mark of the fourth period or (ii) the conclusion of the second mandatory timeout of the fourth period."

There is no allocation by half. A coach may use all seven before halftime if he is foolish enough, or carry all seven into the fourth quarter, where three of them will be worthless. The only limits by time are the two late ones, and both are ceilings, not grants.

Stage of the game	Limit on each team
Regulation as a whole	7 timeouts
First three quarters	No separate limit beyond the 7
Fourth quarter	No more than 4
After the three-minute mark of the fourth, or the end of its second mandatory timeout if later	No more than 2
Each overtime period	2

What the ceilings do in practice

A team that reaches the fourth quarter with six timeouts can use four of them. The other two vanish. A team that reaches the three-minute mark with four can use two. The rule never takes away a timeout a team could still have spent under the cap; it only removes the surplus.

• 7Timeouts per team in regulation
• 75Seconds in a team timeout
• 4Most a team may use in the fourth quarter
• 2Timeouts per team in each overtime

Figures from Rule 5, Section VI of the NBA rulebook. The 75 seconds is the length of an ordinary team timeout; the mandatory timeouts that carry commercial breaks run longer.

How long each one lasts

"Mandatory timeouts shall be 2:45 for local games and 3:15 for national games. Any additional team timeouts in a period beyond those which are mandatory shall be 1:15."

Read that closely and the 75-second figure turns out to describe only some timeouts. The first two stoppages of a quarter are the mandatory ones, whoever causes them, and they run at commercial length. A third or fourth timeout in the same quarter is the short kind. The rule on resumption is strict in both cases: once a timeout is granted, "play shall not resume until the Time-out Clock has expired."

Team timeout beyond the mandatory two75seconds

Mandatory timeout, local broadcast165seconds

Mandatory timeout, national broadcast195seconds

Durations written in Rule 5, Section VI as 1:15, 2:45 and 3:15, converted here to seconds. A local game is one televised in the teams' own markets; a national game is carried by a league broadcast partner.

Show the numbers

Length of each kind of NBA timeout, in seconds

Item	Value
Team timeout beyond the mandatory two	75seconds
Mandatory timeout, local broadcast	165seconds
Mandatory timeout, national broadcast	195seconds

Those lengths are a large part of why a 48-minute game takes as long as it does, a subject our guide to how long an NBA game really lasts breaks down.

NBA mandatory timeout rules: two in every quarter, and who is charged

"There must be two mandatory timeouts in each period." The sentence is addressed to the official scorer, and it is the television contract written into the playing rules.

The mechanism has two checkpoints.

1. 1Before 6:59If either team calls a timeout before the clock reaches 6:59, that stoppage serves as the quarter's first mandatory timeout and is charged to the team that asked.
2. 2At 6:59If neither team has called one, the official scorer takes a timeout at the first dead ball and charges it to the home team.
3. 3Between the twoAny timeout called after the first and before 2:59 serves as the second mandatory timeout, charged to the team that asked.
4. 4At 2:59If no further timeout has been taken, the official scorer takes one at the next dead ball and charges it to the team not previously charged.
5. 5After thatAny more timeouts in the quarter are ordinary 75-second team timeouts.

The procedure in Rule 5, Section VI(c) of the NBA rulebook. At a neutral site, the team named second in the official schedule takes the place of the home team.

The home team goes first

When nobody calls anything, the first automatic stoppage is charged to the home team and the second to the visitors. Over four quarters of a game in which neither coach ever raised a hand, each team would be charged four times. Four of the seven, gone without a single decision.

That arithmetic changes how the allowance should be read. A team does not really have seven timeouts to deploy. It has seven charges, of which up to four will be claimed by the schedule unless somebody else's request absorbs them.

Calling early to shift the charge

The charging rule creates a small game inside the game. Suppose the visiting coach calls a timeout at 9:30 of the first quarter to stop a run. That stoppage counts as the first mandatory. If nothing else happens before 2:59, the second is charged "to the team not previously charged," which is now the home team. The visitors have spent one timeout in the quarter, as they would have anyway, but they chose when.

Now suppose the same coach calls a second one at 5:00. Both mandatory slots are filled, both by him. His opponent gets through the quarter without being charged at all.

What happens in the quarter	First mandatory charged to	Second mandatory charged to
Nobody calls a timeout	Home team, at the first dead ball after 6:59	Visiting team, at the first dead ball after 2:59
Visitors call one before 6:59, nothing more	Visiting team	Home team
Home team calls one before 6:59, nothing more	Home team	Visiting team
One team calls two before 2:59	That team	That team
Each team calls one before 2:59	The first to call	The second to call

Two riders are attached. The scorer must notify a team when it has been charged with a mandatory timeout, so no coach finds out late. And no mandatory timeout may be charged during an official's suspension of play, such as a replay review or the resetting of a clock; the stoppage has to come at a proper dead ball.

Who may call one: a player on the floor or the head coach

One sentence governs every request. "A request for a timeout by a player in the game or the head coach shall be granted only when the ball is dead or in control of a player on the team making the request. A request at any other time shall be ignored."

Two questions are folded together there: who is asking, and what the ball is doing.

The people

Five players on the floor and one head coach. That is the full list. An assistant coach cannot call one, however loudly he shouts it. A player on the bench cannot.

The head coach's authority is an NBA feature that visitors from other codes notice quickly. In international basketball a player on the court has no power to stop the game at all, a difference taken up near the end of this page.

The ball

A dead ball is simple enough. After a whistle, after a made basket before the throw-in, between free throws: either team may ask, and either will be granted.

A live ball is where the rule bites. The request is good only if the ball is "in control of a player on the team making the request." A player holding or dribbling qualifies. A pass in flight is in nobody's hands. A rebound being tipped around is in nobody's hands. The defense, by definition, never qualifies while the ball is live, and a defender who screams for time as his team is being run off the floor is ignored until the ball goes through the net.

The rulebook backs that with a companion sentence: "A timeout can be granted only at the time of the request." Officials do not bank a request and honor it a second later when the catch is finally secure. If the ball was loose when the coach signaled, he has to signal again.

What a team may do with one

Anything. The rule says a timeout "may be used for any reason, including a request for a rule interpretation," and adds that if the team's point is upheld and a correction made, "no timeout shall be charged." During the stoppage "all substitutions are legal for both teams," so the opponent gets the same rest and the same chance to change its lineup. A timeout never benefits only the team that paid for it.

The requests that are refused

Four situations account for nearly every timeout request an NBA official turns down.

The request	Granted	Why
Ball handler dribbling, calls time	Yes	A player on his team controls the ball
Coach signals as two players wrestle for a loose ball	No	No player has control
Player diving out of bounds, both feet in the air, body over the sideline	No	Airborne and past the plane of the boundary
Defense asks during a replay review or other suspension of play	No	The defensive team may not be granted one during a suspension
Either team asks after a whistle	Yes	The ball is dead
Request made as the period clock runs out	No	The period ends and the timeout is not granted

The loose ball

A scramble on the floor is the classic case. Two players have hands on the ball, a third is piling on, and the coach of one team is bent double on the sideline yelling for time. The official's question is whether a player on that team has control. Shared possession is not control. If the official judges that neither player has secured it, the right call is a held ball and a jump, not a timeout.

The player in the air

For years the most athletic way to save a possession was to leap after a ball heading out of bounds, catch it, and call time before landing in the seats. The NBA closed that off. Rule 5, Section VII now reads: "A player shall not be granted any timeout if both of his feet are in the air and any part of his body has broken the vertical plane of the boundary line."

A player with a foot still on the floor may ask. A player who is airborne but entirely over the court may ask. The one who is in the air and across the line may not, and his only lawful option is to throw the ball back to a teammate.

The same sentence extends the idea to midcourt: "This rule also applies to the midcourt line except during throw-ins in the last two minutes of the fourth or last two minutes of any overtime period." An offensive player sailing from the frontcourt toward the backcourt with the ball cannot buy his way out with a timeout. Why that landing would be a violation in the first place is explained in our guide to the over and back rule.

The defense during a suspension of play

When officials stop the game for a review, a clock repair, a delay-of-game warning or a loose ball that bounced into the stands, the rulebook calls it a suspension of play. During one, neither team may substitute and the defensive team may not be granted a timeout. The offense may still call one.

Calling a timeout a team does not have

June 4, 1976, Boston Garden, the second overtime of Game 5 of the NBA Finals. John Havlicek's running bank shot had put the Celtics ahead 111-110 and the crowd had poured onto the floor believing the game was over. The officials cleared the court and put one second back on the clock. Phoenix had the ball under its own basket, the full length of the floor from a shot, and no timeouts left.

Paul Westphal of the Suns asked for one anyway.

Under the rules of the time, the request was granted, Boston was awarded a technical free throw, and Phoenix kept the ball, now advanced to midcourt as it would be after any timeout. Jo Jo White made the free throw for 112-110. Phoenix inbounded from half court, and Garfield Heard caught the pass, turned and hit a jump shot at the buzzer to tie the game. The Celtics won 128-126 in the third overtime. Westphal's idea had bought his team a third overtime for the price of one point.

The league did not leave that door open. The modern rule says that requests for a timeout "in excess of those available to the team at that point in the game" are granted, a technical foul is assessed, and after the timeout the ball goes to the opposing team for a throw-in nearest the spot where play was interrupted.

So the request is still honored. An official does not refuse it or pretend not to hear. The team gets its huddle. Then the opponent shoots one free throw, with any player on the floor eligible to take it, and the opponent is given the ball. A team that calls an excess timeout while it has possession has traded the possession and a free throw for 75 seconds of conversation.

What counts as excess

The wording is "in excess of those available to the team at that point in the game," which reaches further than a team that has used all seven. A team with three left that has already used two after the three-minute mark of the fourth quarter has none available. A request then is an excessive timeout, even though the season-ticket holder counting on his fingers thinks there is one in the bank.

The injury exception

"If a team has no timeouts remaining and a player is injured and cannot be removed from the playing court during a stoppage of play, no excessive timeout will be charged and play will resume when playing conditions are safe." Nobody is penalized because a player could not get up. Other technicals, and what they cost over a season, are the subject of our guide to NBA technical foul rules.

The last two minutes: taking the ball out at the 28-foot mark

Every NBA sideline has a hash mark 28 feet from each baseline, a two-inch line reaching three feet onto the court. For 46 minutes nobody looks at it. In the last two minutes of the fourth quarter and of any overtime it becomes the most valuable spot on the floor.

The rule lets a team that calls a timeout in its backcourt, in those final two minutes, choose to restart from the 28-foot mark in the frontcourt. Ninety-four feet of floor shrink to twenty-eight without a second coming off the clock. With three seconds left, that is the difference between a heave and a play.

When the option exists

It is available only if the timeout is charged to the offense in one of three situations:

• the ball is out of bounds in the backcourt, as it is after an opponent's made basket;
• the team has just secured a rebound in the backcourt and has not yet advanced the ball;
• the team has just gained the ball on a change of possession in the backcourt and has not yet advanced it.

In each case the team may put the ball in play "at the 28' hash mark in the frontcourt or at the designated spot out-of-bounds." It is a choice. Occasionally a coach prefers the backcourt spot, to have the whole floor to run a play into.

How a team loses it

One dribble is enough. The rulebook says that once the ball has been thrown in, or "dribbled or passed after receiving it from a rebound or a change of possession," a timeout is still granted but the ball comes back in "on the sideline where play was interrupted." The advance is gone. To get it back the team must take that sideline throw-in spot and then spend a second timeout.

This is why late rebounds look the way they do. The big man who grabs a defensive board with eight seconds left clutches the ball and looks at the bench instead of turning upcourt, and his teammates wave their hands in a T before he can put it on the floor.

What comes with the advance

Three details matter. The clocks do not move: "The time on the game clock and the shot clock shall remain as when the timeout was called." The throw-in from the hash mark "may be passed into either the frontcourt or backcourt," an exception to the usual ban on throwing a frontcourt inbound pass backward. And if the team does throw it into the backcourt, it "will receive a new 8-second count."

A coach who has no timeout at that moment has no advance, and a team limited to two after the three-minute mark cannot afford to waste either. That is the whole reason one is hoarded.

Overtime: two a period, and nothing carried over

"In overtime periods, each team shall be allowed two (2) team timeouts." That is the entire provision.

Regulation timeouts do not survive the fourth-quarter horn. The seven are granted "during regulation play," and the overtime two are a separate allowance. A team that ended regulation with two unused starts overtime with two. A team that ended with none also starts with two, which is a meaningful rescue for a coach who emptied the tank getting to the tie.

The allowance renews. A second overtime brings two more, a third two more again, and nothing left from the first extra period is added to the second.

Overtime is five minutes long, and the features of late regulation return for its closing stretch. The advance to the 28-foot mark is available in "the last two minutes of any overtime period." So is the freedom to throw an inbound pass anywhere on the floor. The mandatory-timeout clause, by contrast, is written around the 6:59 and 2:59 marks of a twelve-minute quarter, and the rulebook states the overtime allowance on its own line as two team timeouts.

The reset levels two benches that reached the tie by different routes. Because nobody can hold more than two after the three-minute mark of the fourth quarter, two is the most a team can forfeit at the regulation horn. A coach who saved both for a final possession that never needed them has lost them. His opponent, who burned both to manufacture the tying shot, is handed the same pair. Nothing in the rulebook rewards thrift across that boundary, and coaches who know it spend freely in the last minute of a tied game.

A coach's challenge is different. It is granted once per game, not per period, so one that is still unused goes into overtime with the team. The timeout needed to trigger it has to come out of the overtime pair.

Two per period is not many. In a tight overtime a coach has one to advance the ball and one for everything else: a challenge, a tired lineup, a defense that needs resetting. The rest of how an extra period is played, from the jump ball that starts it to the foul limits, is in our guide to NBA overtime rules.

Timeouts as currency: the challenge and the escape from a count

A timeout is also what a team pays with.

The coach's challenge

To challenge a call, Rule 14 says, the team "must call a legal timeout immediately after the call in question," and the head coach must signal for the challenge in the same breath, twirling a finger at the official. No timeout, no challenge. Worse than that: a team that tries to challenge with no timeouts left is charged with an excessive timeout and the technical foul that goes with it.

What happens to the timeout afterward depends on the result.

• If the call stands, the challenge is unsuccessful and the team loses the timeout.
• If the call is overturned on a team's first challenge, it keeps the timeout and is awarded a second challenge.
• If it uses that second challenge, it loses the timeout even when it wins.
• If it challenges something that cannot be reviewed, it is charged the timeout but keeps the challenge.

There is a further wrinkle where the mandatory timeouts are concerned. A successful first challenge returns the timeout "unless the timeout taken in conjunction with the Challenge initiated a mandatory timeout." A stoppage the quarter owed anyway is not handed back.

So a challenge is a wager of one timeout, refundable once. Coaches who are down to two late in the fourth quarter have to weigh a questionable foul call against the advance they may need on the final possession. What a challenge may be used on is covered in our explainer on how NBA replay review works.

Escaping a five-second count

An inbounder has five seconds to release the ball. When every receiver is covered and the official's arm has chopped three or four times, a timeout ends the throw-in before the violation. The team comes back with a new play and a fresh five seconds. It has paid one timeout to avoid a turnover, usually a good price. The counts themselves are described in our guide to the NBA's five-second rules.

Escaping a trap, and the limits of that

A ball handler pinned against the sideline by two defenders, or lying on the floor with the ball and about to be tied up, can call time and turn a likely turnover into a sideline throw-in. That works because he has control.

It works less well against the eight-second count. The rule requiring a team to cross midcourt within eight seconds lists the events that grant a new count, and a timeout by the offense is not among them. The shot clock, which officials use to read the eight seconds, does not move during a timeout either. A team that calls time with seven seconds gone has bought a set play and a throw-in. It has not bought seven seconds. The full list of resets is in our guide to the eight-second backcourt rule.

What a timeout does and does not reset

Much of the confusion about timeouts comes from assuming that a stoppage wipes the slate. Mostly it does not.

Element of play	Effect of a timeout
Game clock	Stops, and restarts when the throw-in is legally touched
Shot clock	Unchanged
Eight-second count	Not renewed by an offensive timeout, except through a late throw-in from the 28-foot mark into the backcourt
Five-second throw-in count	Starts again with the new throw-in
Substitutions	All substitutions legal for both teams
Throw-in spot after a live-ball timeout	Sideline, nearest where play was stopped
Throw-in spot after a dead-ball timeout	Where play was interrupted
Pending free throws	Still shot, after the timeout
Team fouls and personal fouls	Unchanged

The shot clock

A team that calls a timeout with four seconds on the shot clock comes back with four seconds on the shot clock. Nothing in the rule on resetting that clock mentions a timeout, and the list of things on which it is "never reset" includes suspensions of play. The clock's own rules are in our explainer on how the 24-second and 14-second clocks work.

The throw-in spot

Rule 6 separates two cases. "Following a timeout that was called while the ball was alive, the ball shall be awarded out-of-bounds on the sideline at the nearest spot upon resumption of play. For all other timeouts, play shall resume where it was interrupted." A timeout called by a dribbler at the top of the key becomes a sideline throw-in level with where he stood. A timeout called after a made basket leaves the ball on the baseline, where it was going to be anyway, unless the late advance applies.

Free throws

A timeout granted before a free throw does not cancel it. The shooter takes it after the break. That is what makes the practice of "icing" a free throw shooter possible in the NBA: the defending coach calls time and makes him stand around for 75 seconds first. Whether it works is another matter, and one the rulebook has no view on.

How coaches spend them

Four uses account for most of the timeouts an NBA coach calls by choice.

Stopping a run. The opponent scores eight straight, the building is loud, and the home team's guards are rushing shots. A timeout changes nothing on the scoreboard and something in the room. Its mechanical benefits are real too: a substitution, a change of defensive coverage, a rest for five players who have been sprinting.

The one before the three-minute mark. The ceiling of two after 3:00 of the fourth creates a use-it-or-lose-it moment. A coach holding three or four timeouts with 3:20 left will lose the surplus in twenty seconds whether he uses it or not. So he calls one, often at a moment that makes no tactical sense, simply to turn a doomed timeout into a rest and a set play. Fans read these as panic. They are bookkeeping.

A sharper version of the same thinking happens earlier in a quarter. A home coach who knows the scorer will charge him at the next dead ball under 6:59 may call the timeout himself a few seconds before, on his own possession, so that the stoppage arrives when he wants it instead of after an opponent's basket.

The advance. In the last two minutes the most valuable thing a timeout buys is sixty-six feet of floor. A coach trailing by two with five seconds left and the ball under his own basket is not calling time to talk. He is calling it to move the throw-in to the 28-foot mark, and the play he draws up is a bonus. Every other decision in the fourth quarter is made around this use, and it is the reason the last timeout is so rarely spent on a run.

The play after. A dead ball, 75 seconds, a clipboard and a defense that cannot see what is being drawn. Possessions that follow a timeout are the most scripted in basketball, and coaches build reputations on them. The offense knows the first two passes and the two options after that. The defense knows only that something is coming, which is why some coaches answer by changing coverage for that single possession, showing a zone or a switch the offense did not draw against.

The 2017 overhaul: from 18 timeouts a game to 14

Until the 2017-18 season NBA timeouts came in two sizes, full timeouts and the so-called 20-second timeout, and each team's allowance for a game was larger than today's seven. Extra mandatory stoppages were built into the second and fourth quarters, and the last two minutes could contain three timeouts by each team, one after another, with a foul or a free throw between them.

Close games ended slowly, in a stutter of huddles.

In July 2017 the Board of Governors approved a rewrite aimed at exactly that. The league's stated purpose was better flow and pace, especially at the end of games.

• Before 2017-18
• Since 2017-18

Most timeouts possible in a game1814

Timeouts per team late in the fourth quarter32

Timeouts per team in each overtime32

Limits as described in the league's 2017 announcement and in the current Rule 5. The late-game row compares three timeouts per team in the last two minutes under the old rule with two per team after the three-minute mark under the present one.

Show the numbers

NBA timeout limits before and after the 2017 changes

Item	Before 2017-18	Since 2017-18
Most timeouts possible in a game	18	14
Timeouts per team late in the fourth quarter	3	2
Timeouts per team in each overtime	3	2

The main changes were these.

• The most timeouts a game could contain fell from 18 to 14, with each team given seven.
• The two sizes were abolished. Every team timeout became 75 seconds, and the 20-second timeout disappeared.
• Each quarter was given two mandatory timeouts, after the seven-minute and three-minute marks.
• A team could enter the fourth quarter with no more than four.
• The late limit became two per team after the three-minute mark, in place of three per team in the last two minutes.
• Overtime went from three per team to two.

A related measure arrived in the same package and still sits in the delay-of-game rule: a free throw shooter who wanders fully beyond the three-point line between attempts is penalized for it.

Has it worked? Partly. The last three minutes of an NBA game now contain at most four team timeouts where they once could contain six in the last two, and the dreary sequence of timeout, substitution, timeout is rarer. Endgames are still long, because the stoppages that remain are joined by replay reviews and intentional fouls that the 2017 changes did not touch. The reform removed the part of the delay that coaches controlled.

How college, the WNBA and FIBA differ

The rulebooks agree on almost nothing here except that timeouts exist.

Rulebook	Timeouts per team	Length	Who may request
NBA	7 in regulation, 2 per overtime	75 seconds; mandatory ones longer	A player in the game or the head coach
FIBA	2 in the first half, 3 in the second, 1 per overtime	60 seconds	The head coach or first assistant, through the scorer's table
NCAA men	4 in a televised game	One of 60 seconds, three of 30	Players; the head coach only when the ball is dead
High school (NFHS)	5 in regulation	Three of 60 seconds, two of 30	A player or the head coach

FIBA: only the bench can stop the game

International rules give a team five timeouts across four quarters and attach restrictions to each half. Two may be taken in the first half and three in the second, with no more than two of those three in the last two minutes of the fourth quarter. Each overtime brings one. Unused timeouts do not carry forward.

The larger difference is who asks. A FIBA player cannot call a timeout. The request comes from the head coach or the first assistant, goes to the scorer's table, and is granted at the next timeout opportunity: when the ball is dead and the clock stopped, or after the opponent scores. A point guard trapped in the corner in an Olympic game has no lifeline. More of the contrast is in our explainer on how FIBA and NBA rules differ.

College

The college game takes its long commercial breaks as media timeouts, which in the men's game fall at the first dead ball under 16, 12, 8 and 4 minutes of each half, and gives each team a smaller personal allowance on top. Men's rules have also, since a 2015 overhaul, barred head coaches from calling a timeout while the ball is live, leaving live-ball requests to the players on the floor.

College is where the most famous excess timeout in American basketball happened. On April 5, 1993, in the national championship game in New Orleans, Michigan's Chris Webber signaled for time with 11 seconds left and his team trailing North Carolina 73-71. Michigan had none. The technical foul sent North Carolina to the line, and it won 77-71. The other gaps between the campus and professional rulebooks are in our guide to college basketball rules against the NBA's.

The WNBA

The WNBA plays four 10-minute quarters and writes its timeout rule on the NBA model. Its allowance is its own, and it has been revised more than once. We give no number for it here because we could not confirm one against the league's current book; the confirmed differences between the two leagues are collected in our guide to WNBA rules and NBA rules.

The NBA version is the most generous to the people on the floor and the most tightly rationed at the end, a combination the league arrived at only in 2017. The rest of its rulebook is covered across our basketball pages.