Today in Sports History: April 22nd
(Biasone, the inventor of the shot clock, in 1992. Photo by Michael Okoniewski, AP)
4/22/1954 - NBA introduces shot clock
A long-overdue innovation to the game of basketball happens as the NBA adopts the 24-second shot clock. For years, NBA games ranged from being very exciting to unbelievably boring, with the latter winning out more often than not. Teams would hold the ball for minutes a time to prevent their opponent from scoring, and it wasn’t uncommon for games to go ten minutes without a bucket. The most famous example of this came in 1950, when in order to beat George Mikan and the Minneapolis Lakers, the Fort Wayne Pistons held the ball until they won, 19-18.
With fears that such tactics were turning away fans, the shot clock was a much-needed invention. Championed by Daniel Biasone, the owner and founder of the Syracuse Nationals (who would later become the Philadelphia 76ers), the shot clock made its debut on the opening day of the 1954 season. Why 24 seconds? Biasone, along with Nats general manager Leo Ferris, divided the number of seconds in a 48-minute game (2,880) by the average number of shots in a game from the previous three seasons (120). The answer was 24.
The shot clock brought a breathe of fresh air to the NBA. Now that teams had only 24 seconds to shoot the ball, scoring went up dramatically and the game became much faster and more up-tempo. “Whatever the NBA is today is due to one little guy -- Danny Biasone,” Maurice Podoloff, the first commisioner of the NBA once said. “If it hadn’t been for him, the NBA would not have lasted.”
Further reading:
In 1954, Shot Clock Revived a Stalled NBA [New York Times]
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