Buzzer Beater

NOTE: This episode is a rebroadcast. There may be minor differences between the episode and the transcript you see below.

BRIAN: When we think about clocks, there are few that produce as much suspense as those at a sporting event. One of our producers, Eric Mennel, has been on a mission to convince the rest of our staff that the most ingenious clock in American history is professional basketball’s 24-second shot clock.

ERIC MENNEL: OK, I appreciate that not everyone listening is a sports fan. But put your feelings about basketball aside for just a few minutes and listen to the raw human emotion in this.

MALE SPEAKER: 4 seconds left, double overtime, Nets looking for the win. Johnson the [INAUDIBLE].

MALE SPEAKER: 5 seconds to go. Tied at 90. Ginobili, step back. Jumper!

ERIC MENNEL: The buzzer beater, the game winning shot made just as time expires. It’s exhilarating, it’s heartbreaking, a moment of pure anxiety millions of people can share as one. And the fact that a 48 minute game of basketball can still be won in its final microseconds, is all thanks to one man and one clock, Danny Biasone and the 24-second shot clock.

Now, for the uninitiated, a shot clock is the smaller clock you sometimes see counting down in the bottom corner of the TV screen. In the NBA, when a team gets the ball, they have 24 seconds to make a shot. And if they don’t, it’s a violation. And they lose the ball,

But this hasn’t always been the case. In the early 1950s, during pro basketball’s infancy, there was no shot clock. If a team was winning and they wanted to keep their lead, they could hold onto the ball for literally 10 minutes and not do anything with it. Essentially, milk the clock.

DOLPH SCHAYES: I mean the game stopped. It was before it was stupid

ERIC MENNEL: This is Dolph Schayes. He’s in the NBA Hall Of Fame, a former player and coach, whose career spanned two eras of basketball, before the inception of the shot clock and after. He says this problem of players running time off the clock by just dribbling the ball around can really be summed up in a 1950 game between the Fort Wayne Pistons and the Minneapolis Lakers.

DOLPH SCHAYES: There was a big game near the end of the season. And the Lakers, they had like a dynasty at that time. And so the Pistons–

ERIC MENNEL: Who were ahead–

DOLPH SCHAYES: Decided to have a slow down.

ERIC MENNEL: Meaning run the time off the clock.

DOLPH SCHAYES: Well, the game ended up 17 to 16.

ERIC MENNEL: As the final score–

DOLPH SCHAYES: The final score, or something like that. It was in the teens.

ERIC MENNEL: Actually, it was 19 to 18. Go Pistons.

DOLPH SCHAYES: And of course, the crowd was booing. I mean it became a real farce.

ERIC MENNEL: It was such a joke, that in 1953 NBC decided to forgo coverage of the NBA championship. They thought the game would be too boring.

DOLPH SCHAYES: Finally, it became a crisis. So basketball needed a rule change.

ERIC MENNEL: 1954, enter Danny Biasone, owner of the Syracuse Nationals, the team Dolph Schayes played for

DOLPH SCHAYES: And Danny Biasone said, look, I have this formula. Why don’t we try it out.

ERIC MENNEL: By Biasone’s calculations–

DOLPH SCHAYES: Each team averaged 60 shots per game.

ERIC MENNEL: Two teams, that means 120 shots.

DOLPH SCHAYES: And the game was still 48 minutes long. And 48 minutes equates to 2,880 seconds.

ERIC MENNEL: So you divide the number of seconds in the game.

DOLPH SCHAYES: 2,880–

ERIC MENNEL: By the number of shots,–

DOLPH SCHAYES: 120–

ERIC MENNEL: And you get–

DOLPH SCHAYES: 24.

ERIC MENNEL: 24 seconds per shot, the 24 second shot clock. Biasone invited a bunch of league officials to Syracuse to watch a practice game using the shot clock. Schayes played in that game.

DOLPH SCHAYES: Everybody felt the 24 seconds, I mean it was a very short period of time. So when we got the ball, I said shoot it, shoot it, shoot it. And everybody thought, oh, my god, you gotta shoot the thing.

ERIC MENNEL: Another player told me, if you’re human, you’re going to make mistakes. But with this new clock, you had the opportunity to make a lot more mistakes.

The entire team’s sense of time had become compressed. The old game didn’t used to seem slow. But with this new clock, everything felt rushed.

DOLPH SCHAYES: And the owners loved it. They thought wow, this is going to be great.

ERIC MENNEL: Even in these practice games, there was a new sense of suspense. The owners felt it. And the players learn to love it too. The clock became official in the 1954-55 season.

DOLPH SCHAYES: Immediately, the scoring went up. Frankly, the 24-second clock is the perfect time. 24 seconds actually allows for a great deal of action.

MALE SPEAKER: Syacuse puts the ball in play when number 4, Dolph Schayes, wearing a cast on his left arm, taking the ball out of bounds.

ERIC MENNEL: This is audio from the 1955 NBA finals, the first year the clock was instituted. Schayes’ team, the Syracuse Nationals, were in the finals that year.

MALE SPEAKER: Other changes in the pro game is limiting the offensive team to 24 seconds of possession with the basketball. The pros believe that the paying customer would rather see a fast-moving, high-scoring game than a defensive battle between possession teams.

ERIC MENNEL: They won. The next year, the NBA finals were broadcast on national television for the first time. Scoring went up by almost 30 points a game over next few seasons. And shortly after that, attendance jumped by 40%.

DOLPH SCHAYES: That 24-second clock, that little idea that was started in 1955, revolutionized and saved the game of basketball.

ERIC MENNEL: And it did so in the cleverest of ways. By the middle of the 20th century, images of clocks counting down were ubiquitous. There were timers on washing machines and in kitchens. The Doomsday Clock was counting down the nuclear Armageddon. All sorts of new anxieties about modern life were wrapped up in the inevitability that time would do indeed expire.

And the shot clock capitalized on that. But you know what–

MALE SPEAKER: They get it to Fisher.

MALE SPEAKER: He scores. Derek Fisher scores at the at the buzzer. It will have to be reviewed.

ERIC MENNEL: Sometimes, time running out isn’t such a bad thing.

MALE SPEAKER: Oh, my god.

MALE SPEAKER: We’ve got to take a look at it. But I got to tell you, live, it looked good.

MALE SPEAKER: I thought it did too.

PETER: Eric Mennel is one of our producers.