|
|
Syracuse and the 24 second clock.
The 24 second clock in the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame
|
|
The game was dull, interest was waning. Stalling was all too common for a team with a lead. Dribble and pass. Teams were marching from one foul line to the other. The most uneventful game in NBA history involved just eight baskets and a 19-18 final score. In 1953, a playoff game between Boston and Syracuse had 106 total fouls called and 128 free throws attempted. Something needed to be done to bring interest back to a game that was already far behind in popularity compared to baseball, football and hockey.
Danny Biasone, owner of the Syracuse Nationals, had an idea that would become the solution. Basketball had no time limits, baseball had outs per innings, football had four downs in a possession. He came up with a formula that would increase offense and keep the game moving. Excessive fouling would also be a thing of the past because it wouldn't play into team strategy anymore.
The shot clock would give teams 24 seconds to shoot the ball or lose possession. In 1954, Danny took his team to Blogett School on Oswego Street in Syracuse to test out his new idea. At first, the players would take quick, hurried shots. Then they realized that they had more time than they reallized and would set up plays and work with the clock. It was a success. To this day, the clock has not changed, still 24 seconds.
Syracuse would go on to win the 1955 NBA championship, the first using a shot clock. |
Quotes:
Danny Biasone: “Pro basketball would not have survived without a clock.”
Maurice Podoloff: “The adoption of the clock was the most important event in the NBA.” "Whatever the N.B.A. is today is due to one little guy - Danny Biasone... if it hadn't been
for him, the N.B.A. would not have lasted."
Red Auerbach: “The single most important rule
change in the last 50 years.”
From Leonard Koppett's 24 Seconds To Shoot: “Biasone had arrived at 24 seconds as the time limit by the simple
method of dividing the number of shots taken in typical games into time
played. Twenty-four seconds meant 120 shots a game - 60 per team. In the
season just completed, each team had averaged 75-80 shots per game.
Obviously, the new rule would not be too restrictive. And 24 seconds was
a long time. A team had to get the ball past the centerline within 10
seconds anyhow; usually this took only two or three. And the average
basketball play, with a couple of cuts off the pivot and other
maneuvers, seldom took as long as 10 seconds to execute. Without a
limit, the NBA had averaged about one shot every 18 seconds. The new
rule would be reasonable.”
Frank J. Basloe: "The 24 second rule was a Godsend for the pros. It saved the game for them."
Bob Cousy: "I think [the shot clock] saved the NBA"
Charley Eckman: "Danny Biasone saved the NBA with the 24-second rule"
Billy "Bullet" Gabor: "That shot clock saved the game. The game was going down the tubes."
Maurice Podoloff: "It appears that the 24-second rule has solved our stalling problem." October 25, 1954, Syracuse Post Standard
Sonny Hertzberg: "I think it was a great addition fo rthe spectator. If you're brought up in a basketball environment, you can appreciate good ball handling, dribbling, and passing, but ninety percent of the people go to a ball game to be entertained and the 24-second clock makes for marvelous entertainment." -From Set Shot To Slam Dunk
Nat "Feets" Broudy: "I don't care what they say, there's no question in my mond that the 24-second clock saved basketball." -From Set Shot To Slam Dunk
|
From Tall Tales, by Terry Pluto. Pages 28-31.
Twenty-four Seconds That Saved The Game
The NBA played without a shot clock for its first nine seasons before Danny Biasone's idea of 24 seconds to shoot was adopted at the NBA's summer meetings in 1954. Other key rule changes were six fouls per team per quarter- after that, every foul meant two free throws. If the player was fouled in the act of shooting, he would receive three opportunities to make two free throws. If a player was "intentionally fouled in the backcourt," he would receive two free throws. In the last season before the clock, teams averaged 79 points per game. In the first year with the 24-second clock, the average was 93 points. After four years with the clock, it was 107 points. By 1959-60, the average was 115 points, with Boston scoring 124 per game.
Dolph Schayes: Most people forget that Danny Biasone was the Wilbur Wright of
basketball. Because he invented the 24-second clock, the game took off.
Yet he was a man who never played the game.
Johnny Kerr: Danny was a small Italian guy. He wore long, double-breasted coats, Borsalino hats and smoked filter cigarettes. As he talked, he left the cigarette in his mouth and bit down on the filter. He made his money not in basketball, but at his bowling alley- Eastwood Recreation Center in Syracuse. He sat on the bench during games, usually next to the coach, with that cigarette cleched between his teeth. He'd yell at the officials, but seldom said anything to his coach during the games.
Danny Biasone: I had been in the bowling business since 1941- I had 10 lanes upstairs and a restaurant downstairs. I owned a semipro football team before World War Two. After the war, I didn't have enough guys to play football on my team. But I did for basketball, even though I didn't know a thing about the game. Lester Harrison had a good basketball team in Rochester. There's a natural rivalry between Rochester and Syracuse, so I wanted to play Rochester. They were in the National Basketball League- they wouldn't play us. I said I'd pay them $500 for a game. They still wouldn't do it. I raised my offer to $1000. No soap. I called the National Basketball League and told them about it. They said for $1,000, I could be in their league and then Harrison would have to play me. I sent them $1,000 and I owned a pro basketball team for the 1946-47 season. So I got into the game by accident. But I found I loved it. I studied it, and I hated seeing how the fouling was destroying it. I started talking about a time limit on possessions around 1951, after the 19-18 game. I said baseball had three outs an inning, football has four downs, every game has a limit on possessions except basketball. Finally, I sold the idea to Maurice Podoloff. I said, let's have the 1954 summer meetings in Syracuse and I'll put on a game with a shot clock so we can see how it works.
Chick Hearn: The amazing thing about the 24-second clock is that it started at 24 seconds and still is 24 seconds today. No one has seriously considered changing it.
Danny Biasone: Now that I had this idea for a clock, I had to decide, "How much time?" I looked at the box scores from the games I enjoyed, games where they didn't screw around and stall. I noticed each team took about 60 shots. That meant 120 shots per game. So I took 48 minutes- 2,880 seconds- and divided that by 120 shots. The result was 24 seconds per shot. That was it- 24 seconds. But i said it didn't habe have to be 24 seconds. It could be 30, 20, whatever- just something. But everyone said, "Danny, it's your idea, you want 24, let's try 24."
Dolph Schayes: Danny got together some of us pros who lived in Syracuse and some local and college and high school players for an exhibition game. It was held at a local high school.
Haskell Cohen: We were going to have a game with a 24-second clock, but no one had a clock. I always had a good wristwatch, so I said I'd keep the time with my second hand. When the 24 seconds, I'd just yell "Time." There were very few violations.
Dolph Schayes: When the game started, we though we had to take quick shots- a pass and a shot was it- maybe 8-10 seconds. That made for a bad game with a lot of dumb shots and turnovers. But as the game went on, we saw the inherent genius in Danny's 24 seconds- you could work the ball around for a good shot. During the game, Danny would tell us, "Twenty-four seconds is a long time, take your time out there." He had complete confidence in his formula.
Danny Biasone: A month after that exhibiton game, Podoloff polled every owner by phone and they all voted in favor of the 24-second clock. But they weren't positive it would work until we tried it out in the exhibition season. Since no one wanted to spend money for shot clocks that you might not need a month later, the time was kept by someone with a stopwatch sitting at press row during the exhibition games. Once the regular season started, the league bought shot clocks.
Haskell Cohen: There were few- if any- complaints about the 24-second clock. It was immediately accepted and it gave us the kind of game we wanted for years- no endless stalling or fouling.
Dolph Schayes: There weren't any real problems for the players. We liked it and there is something about 24 seconds that is just right for pro basketball.
Norm Drucker: I don't want to take anything away from Danny Biasone because the clock was a brilliant idea, but I think the players are such remarkable athletes that they could adjust to almost any time frame- 20 seconds, 30 seconds, maybe even 16 seconds.
Bill Sharman: Once the idea of a 24-second clock was mentioned, I favored a 30-second clock, which we later used in both the American Basketball League and the American Basketball Association. I thought that gave the offense time for a couple more passes and more strategy. But as a player during that era, I was just grateful that they came up with some kind of clock.
Gene Shue: Once the shot clock came in, the game was speeded up and it played into the hands of teams with good athletes. Within a few years, you had the clock, the use of the jump shot, and the emergence of the black player in the league. All of this put the emphasis on the running game. The pieces of what we now see as the NBA were falling into place. Red Auerbach was the first to recognize this trend and he built a running team around Bill Russell. The great Celtics team took advantage of Danny Biasone's 24-second clock.
Earl Strom: A number of years ago, I officiated a game in Syracuse. I got together with Paul Seymour, Dolph Schayes and Larry Costello and we went to see Danny Biasone, who still owned the bowling alley then. I asked about the original 24-second clock and Danny said he still had it. We went into his office at the bowling alley and there it was. I said, "Danny, this thing should be in the Hall of Fame." He said, "It goes into Hall of Fame when I go in." Danny has a great point- he should be in.
Danny Biasone: Ah, I decided I won't live forever and the Hall of Fame wanted the clock, so a few years ago I gave it to them. Why the hell not? At least part of me is there. |
November 06, 1989 -SPORTS ILLUSTRATED
In The Nick Of Time
Thirty-five years ago the 24-second clock was created, the
invention of Danny Biasone, a bowling alley proprietor and owner of the
Syracuse Nationals. The clock may have saved pro basketball, whose fans
had grown frustrated by the stalling tactics of the day.
The
heartbeat of the game is shown on the digital display above the
backboard, the numbers changing each second. How much time? The question
is perpetually asked by everyone watching or playing. The clock always
gives the answer.
"24 seconds...
"23...
"22...."
If the game has become a dance, a ballet for big men, then this
is the tempo. The rhythm is in the numbers. There never is the luxury of
base-ball's contemplative dugout life, with all that time to reflect
and chew sunflower seeds and bubble gum and stringy wads of tobacco. No
huddles. No conversations with caddies. Time always presses the action.
Go. Move. Do. The numbers move lower and lower, down to single digits.
Single digits? Already?
"3 seconds...
"2...
"1...
"0...."
A grim buzzer and failure await the tardy. Twenty-four seconds
to shoot. No more. Never. The equipment is as basic to the professional
game as ball and rim, net and court and moon-boot sneakers. An alarm
clock is in charge, every foot running on a swift conveyor belt.
The alarm clock is 35 years old. Happy birthday, alarm clock.
"I wasn't looking for any particular time," Danny Biasone says. "I was just looking for a number. Any number. Twenty-four seconds is what came out."
He is 80 years old and still spends most of his days at the
bowling alley he has owned for most of his adult life in the Eastwood
section of Syracuse, N.Y. In 1954 he also owned the Syracuse Nationals in the NBA.
He did not have the money that the owners of some other franchises had,
but he shared with them a great unease about what had developed in
their game. He sometimes thought he owned a still-life painting instead
of a basketball team.
The strategy of the day had become inaction. Get a lead. Hold
the ball. Go to the foul line. Make the foul shots. Teams were deciding
to stall earlier and earlier in the game, especially if they were
underdogs. The low point had been reached on Nov. 22, 1950, when Fort Wayne Piston coach Murray Mendenhall had his team hold the ball for most of the game to defeat the Minneapolis Lakers 19-18. The score at the end of the first period was 8-7, Pistons. The crowd was enraged.
Biasone felt that there had been enough talk about the problem.
What to do? Various rule changes had been tried. None had worked. He
developed his own idea: The shot clock. "Teams were taking about 60
shots in a game if nobody screwed around," Biasone says. "I figured if
the teams combined for 120 shots in a game and the game was 48 minutes
long....
I divided 120 shots into 2,880 seconds, I believe. The answer was 24."
There were no grand tests with wind tunnels at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, no experiments with white mice. Biasone simply persuaded the other league owners to come to Vocational High in Syracuse
for a summertime demonstration. He scrimmaged some players from his
team against some other players who lived in the area. Haskell Cohen,
then the league's publicity director, kept track of the time and called
out when the 24 seconds had elapsed. The owners liked the idea and
agreed to try the rule in the exhibition season. It worked so well in
the exhibitions that it was immediately adopted for the 1954-55 regular
season.
"I remember Red Auerbach sat us down before the first game with the clock and said, 'Don't think about it,' " Boston Celtics Hall of Fame guard Bob Cousy
says. "He told us to just go out and play our game naturally. And we
did. I don't think we were called two times in the entire season for not
getting a shot off within 24 seconds."
The game suddenly had a wonderful amount of free air. Cousy had
been one of the major weapons before the clock was added. With six
minutes left, sometimes even eight minutes, Auerbach had handed him the ball and told him to start dribbling. He had spent a lifetime on the foul line.
"I bet I lost about 10 points a game from the foul line because
of that rule, but it also probably prolonged my career," Cousy says.
"The fouls were getting worse and worse. Guys would really hit you. Paul Hoffman [of the Baltimore Bullets] literally tackled me once, he was so frustrated. The clock opened everything up."
The
early clocks sat on the floor in most arenas, often obscured by
photographers and fans. Defenders found ways to put their bodies between
dribblers and the clock. How much time? Malfunctions happened
often—customers tripping over wires on the way to courtside seats. The NBA was much more like a traveling circus in those days, and the clock was one of the oddities that came along with the show.
"You played all over. It was the home team's responsibility to provide the clocks, even on a neutral floor," says Marty Blake, publicity man for the old Milwaukee Hawks. "I had two clocks, three bags of wires. It took up a whole cab. One night Minneapolis and Philadelphia played in Chicago, and I came down from Milwaukee
to run the clocks for them. I had the bags of wires, the boxes, the
whole thing. So I get there. Somebody forgot to bring the balls."
The number of controversies generated by the rule was low. Who
can argue with an alarm clock? The only complaints were with the man who
ran the clock. He would sit with his finger poised over the reset
button, waiting for a shot to hit the backboard or rim or go through the
basket. Sometimes visiting coaches would find the home finger slow when
the home team got the ball.
"I think there used to be some slow-fingered timers in the league, but even that stopped," Utah Jazz president Frank Layden
says. "You know why? The world of gambling won't let that happen. Point
spreads are too sacred. The oddsmakers wouldn't tolerate slow clocks.
With the taping of games and everything now, I'll bet they test the
clocks all the time."
Teams tried little strategies, like bouncing the ball off the
backboard to reset the clock, but they soon found that the best strategy
was to keep playing. If the clock was winding down, a man simply had to
free himself and take a shot. One-on-one. The roads that Michael Jordan would travel were established. All he had to do was be born.
"I look at films of the old games, and they look like slow
motion," says Buddy Jeannette, who coached the 1947-48 champion
Baltimore Bullets of the Basketball Association of America, an NBA precursor. "We took our time back then."
The highest-scoring team in the league in 1947-48 was the Chicago Stags (75.8 points per game). The NBA average in the '54-55 season was 92.6.
"The amazing thing to me is that no one has tampered with the number," Biasone says. "It's still the same. Twenty-four seconds."
Other numbers have been appropriated by other levels of the
game. In college ball the men have a 45-second clock and the women have a
30-second clock. The international amateur game has a 30-second clock.
The professionals have kept 24, institutionalizing it, covering it with a
certain amount of moss, making it a familiar number. The NBA. The 24-second clock.
"It's one of those intrinsically perfect, wonderfully illogical,
perfectly imperfect numbers, like nine innings in baseball and 18 holes
in golf," says broadcaster Mike Newlin, a former NBA
guard. "It's an orphan number that fits perfectly into the family of
basketball. I know. I've played the game, and 24 seconds is perfect,
providing just enough comfort to get off the shot."
The
clocks have been modernized, taken to the top of the backboards, where
players, coaches and fans can read them. The wires have been tactfully
hidden. The timekeepers sometimes have more arguments with the home-team
coaches than with the visitors. "I get 25 dollars per game," Atlanta clock operator Bruce Bell says, "and [Hawk coach] Mike Fratello's yelling, 'Remember where your check's coming from.' Like that's important to me."
There have been modifications around the basic rule—the latest
one, established this year, eliminates the five-second reset when a ball
goes out of bounds; if one second is left when a ball goes out without a
change of possession, one second is all the inbounding team gets—but
the heartbeat invented by Biasone remains.
"If a team is good offensively, the clock doesn't come into play much," says Sacramento Kings
coach Jerry Reynolds. "But it's kind of a myth that you can get a shot
anytime you want. With teams that aren't good offensively or don't have
good one-on-one players, the 24-second clock is a factor. If you can get
the ball to Michael Jordan
with six seconds left, there isn't much worry about getting a shot. Get
it to some of the players that we've had and you worry."
"I remember coaching in Phoenix and being behind Boston by 26 points at halftime," says Dallas Maverick coach John MacLeod.
"We came back and won, but we'd never have done it without the
24-second clock. I've been up 20 and blown it too, but in this instance
we trailed the whole game. Charlie Scott got the last shot and made it, and we won."
"Overall, it's been great," says swingman Robert Reid of the Portland Trail Blazers. "Especially in the playoffs, when each possession is more valuable. The shot clock makes the game wide open, gives the NBA a mystique."
Twenty-four seconds. The conveyor belt rolls. If reading this
story has taken you three minutes, the clock has already forced at least
seven shots and is clicking toward an eighth.
"3 seconds...
"2...
"1...."
"When you sit up in the stands, it seems like just some guy
pushing a button," says Barry Liebowitz, who became the clock operator
for the Washington Bullets
last year. "The first five games, I was so nervous. I was a wreck. I
couldn't enjoy the game. I was going home with headaches because I was
stiff and tense from watching the ball. The whole universe was focused
in on that ball. I was so worried about making a mistake....
Have you ever had Wes Unseld looming over you?"
"24...
"23...
"22...."
"I'll be watching the games on television," Biasone says. "I like to watch the games."
Happy birthday, alarm clock.
|
|
|
|
