The Book of Basketball: The NBA According to The Sports Guy

by Bill Simmons

When Syracuse owner Danny Biasone7 created the 24-second shot clock, his brainstorm didn’t do much except for speeding up possessions, eliminating stalling, hiking league scoring by 13.6 points per team and basically saving the league. How did he arrive at 24? Biasone studied games he remembered enjoying and realized that, in each of those games, both teams took around 60 shots. Well, 60 + 60 = 120. So Biasone settled on 120 shots as the minimum combined total that would be acceptable from a “I’d rather kill myself than watch another NBA game like this” standpoint. And if you shoot every 24 seconds over the course of a 48-minute game, that comes out to … wait for it … 120 shots! Biasone came up with the idea in 1951 and spent three years selling the other owners on it, even staging an exhibition game for them in August 1954, using a shot clock, to prove the idea worked. That’s how we ended up with a 24-second clock. Of course, the nitwits in Springfield didn’t induct him until 2000, which would have been touching if poor Biasone hadn’t been dead for eight years. Really, inventing the shot clock and saving professional basketball wasn’t enough of an accomplishment to make the Basketball Hall of Fame for forty-one years? And you wonder why I’m blowing it up later in the book. Personally, I think we should create a $24 bill and put Biasone’s picture on it.