Garbage time Garbage time , also known as " junk time " , is a term used to refer to the period at the end of a timed sporting event that has become a blowout when the outcome of the game has already been decided , and the coaches of one or both teams will decide to replace their best players with substitutes . This serves to give those substitutes playing time experience in an actual game situation , as well as to protect the best players from the possibility of injury . Garbage time owes its name to the fact that that period in a game is frequently marked by a significant drop in the quality of game play . This occurs for two primary reasons . First , the players involved during that time are generally less experienced , having not played nearly as often as the starting players . And second , the fact that seldom - used substitutes usually desire more future playing time means that when those players do play , they are often more concerned with making an individual impression than with executing team play at its best ; this is especially true during garbage time because at that point , the matter of which team will win has already been decided anyway . There are so - called " unwritten rules " for garbage time which indicate that the leading team should neither continue to play its starting players , devote unnecessary effort toward increasing the size of its lead , nor attempt particularly difficult and spectacular plays . Doing so is interpreted as an unsportsmanlike attempt to embarrass or humiliate the trailing team , and in some cases may also be seen as retaliation , either against the opponent or the critics of the team in general ( see " running up the score " for a more detailed explanation of this type of behavior ) . However , sometimes a team may have a legitimate motivation for running up the score , such when margin of victory is a factor in rankings , as it was for many years in the Bowl Championship Series . During garbage time , the trailing team can sometimes rack up an unusually high tally of statistics , leading the respective box score to be misleading with respect to their actual game performance . For instance , in American football , if the losing team is behind by several touchdowns , the offense may resort entirely to the passing game in a futile effort to catch up . At the same time , the leading team ( on defense , with inferior players ) may allow them to complete plays ( which benefits them by running out the clock ) . This may lead the statistics to indicate a high amount of passing yards for the losing squad , which would suggest the team performed better than in reality . In general , although not always the case , it is not unusual for the losing team to have more passing attempts / yards than the winning team . Particularly at the youth level , garbage time is eliminated by the use of a mercy rule , which automatically ends a game when the margin of winning has crossed a point that is commonly believed to be insurmountable . The phrase " garbage time " is one of a number of commonly used basketball terms , each of which is thought to have either been coined by broadcaster Chick Hearn , or first given widespread exposure through Hearn ' s adoption of it for use during his broadcasts .