Overtime is the extra period, five minutes in the NBA, played when a game is tied at the end of regulation.
Overtime is where basketball's memory concentrates. When forty eight minutes fail to separate two teams, the NBA adds a five minute period, and as many more as the tie requires. Everything resets except the players' foul counts and the score, which carries over, so overtime is a short game played by tired starters under maximum pressure.
The record book gives it special weight. Playoff overtimes decide legacies, and the multiple overtime classics, including the triple overtime Finals game between Boston and Phoenix in 1976, often called the greatest game ever played, are remembered by their extra periods alone. Regular season overtime records for points and minutes fill the forensic tier of scorekeeping.
A rules quirk worth knowing: in the NBA, overtime is statistically continuous with the game, so a 55 point night that includes overtime points is simply a 55 point night. Other competitions experiment with target score endings, but the league has kept the timed extra period. For quizzes, overtime questions test whether you know the game had a fifth act at all: many famous scoring totals and comebacks only make sense once the extra five minutes are counted.
In use"The Finals game went to overtime tied at ninety eight."