Daniel Biasone

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Daniel Biasone (February 22, 1909 - May 25, 1992) was the founding owner of the Syracuse Nationals, an NBA team now known as the Philadelphia 76ers. Biasone, who was a childhood immigrant to the United States from Italy, was mostly known for advocating the use of the shot clock in basketball.

Although he did not come up with the idea of a shot clock, he was its strongest advocate, successfully urging the NBA to adopt the clock in 1954. Biasone was responsible for setting the NBA shot clock at 24 seconds, where it has remained to this day.

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.

The shot clock has since been adopted, with varying lengths, for FIBA and U.S. college play. He also was a primary force behind the NBA's adoption of the backcourt foul rule in 1953, by which two free throws are awarded for a player fouled in the backcourt.

Biasone was posthumously inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame in 2000 for his contributions to the sport.