How to track basketball minutes

To track minutes played, write down the game clock every time a player checks in or out. Each stretch on the floor (a stint) lasts from the clock time they came in to the clock time they left. Add up a player's stints and you have their minutes.

Minutes come from the game clock, not your watch. Time-outs, free throws and reviews don't count.

The clock-at-sub method

1. Start with the five on the floor. Every starter's first stint begins at the full period time. A high school quarter starts at 8:00.
2. At every substitution, note the clock. The player going out ends a stint at that time. The player coming in starts one.
3. At the end of each period, close every open stint at 0:00. Whoever is on the floor at the buzzer played to the end of the period.
4. Subtract, then add. The clock counts down, so a stint is the time in minus the time out.

A worked example: Carter checks in with 4:32 left in the opening quarter and stays until the buzzer. That stint is 4:32 − 0:00 = 4 minutes 32 seconds. If he comes back in the second quarter at 6:10 and sits at 2:15, that's another 3:55. His total so far is 8:27.

Check your total

On every full game, the minutes of everyone on one team add up to five times the game length. A high school game played as four 8-minute quarters is 32 minutes, so the team total is 160. If yours comes out at 158 or 163, a sub went missing or a clock time is wrong. Find it before the next period.

The sample box score shows a game where the minutes add up this way.

Rounding

Box scores usually show whole minutes. The FIBA Statisticians' Manual rounds anything under 30 seconds down and 30 seconds or more up. Any playing time at all rounds up to at least one minute. A player who never checks in gets "DNP" (did not play), not a zero. Your league may round differently. Pick one rule and keep it all season.

When you miss the clock

It will happen. A sub comes in during a scramble at the table and nobody looks up at the scoreboard. You have two honest choices:

• Estimate, and mark it. Write down your best guess and flag it as an estimate. Fix it later from video or the official scorer's notes if you can.
• Leave it open. Write the sub without a time and come back to it at the next dead ball.

Don't round a guess into something that looks exact. A minutes total built on a guessed sub is an estimate. Say so.

Doing it by voice

In HoopReads, minutes need two settings turned on before the game: Track lineups and Track minutes. With lineups on, you set the starting five before any play is called. After that you call subs out loud, and the clock time goes first:

“4:32, Carter in for James”

“2:15, 3 and 34 in for 5 and 12”

You can call a sub without the clock. HoopReads still updates who is on the floor. It can't know exactly when the sub happened, so it marks that stint's minutes as estimated, and you can correct the time later:

“Carter in for James”

Close each period by voice. Every open stint ends at 0:00:

“end of first”

“halftime”

HoopReads takes the period length from your team's game format. The default is high school, four 8-minute quarters. It keeps minutes for your team only, because it doesn't follow the other bench.

Minutes and plus/minus

Once you know who was on the floor and when, you can also work out plus/minus: the score difference during each player's time on the court. It uses the same lineup record.

The book and your stats

Substitutes report to the official scorer before they go in, and the scorebook records who has played. It doesn't keep a running record of each player's minutes, so minutes are something your team keeps for itself. For the rest of the job, see how to keep basketball stats.