Because I'm the queen of useless but interesting information...here's a little thing I found while surfing the net. Ever wonder why the 24 second shot clock started in basketball? Or why it's 24 seconds. Probably not. But let me tell ya! Back in the day, all a team had to do was get a nice lead in the game, then just waste the rest of the game passing to each other and playing keep away from the other team until the game was over. This made some really low scoring games, and people weren't interested to come to watch because it was so boring! So they decided to create a time clock for possession. But why the 24 seconds? Here's why:

The question we want to consider here, though, is "Why 24 seconds?" Given our penchant for favoring round numbers, why didn't the NBA adopt a 30-second clock, or at least a 25-second clock? What's so special about the 24 seconds?

The answer is that Danny Biasone, the aforementioned owner who pushed for the adoption of the 24-second rule, based his proposal upon his observations, experience, and simple arithmetic. In Biasone's judgment, basketball was most exciting when it was neither a stalling contest nor a wild shootout, but a well-paced game in which team took 60 shots apiece. Since professional basketball games were 48 minutes long, Biasone divided 2880 (the number of seconds in 48 minutes) by 120 (the total number of shots taken per game when each team attempted 60 shots) and arrived at an optimal figure of one shot every 24 seconds. From such a simple formula came a change that completely reinvigorated professional basketball, a rule it is now hard to imagine the game ever did without.
From snopes.com

Now you know! You can spread this knowledge to your friends at critical times during basketball games so they can say "Shut up!" and kick you in the head.

Posted by Yano at August 17, 2006 07:16 AM

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