Learn Everything About Basketball - Players per team, game length, shot clocks Playing time of a basketball game depends on the level of competition. A basketball game organized by International Basketball Federation, consists of 4 quarters (periods) of 10 minutes with 2 minutes gap between each quarter. The allotted time of a NBA game is 48 minutes, split into 4 quarters of 12 minutes but normally it takes a much longer time to finish an NBA game as there are so many interruptions and delays