Mark Cuban RSS Feed:An NBA Fun Fact

[David Sandusky]

My RSS Feed is a Thinker and Has Just Posted the Following:

Is it possible for the shot clock to have more time on it than the game clock ?

Those of you paying close attention to the Suns vs Spurs game might have noticed during the 2nd overtime, Ginobli grabbed a huge rebound and while he was expecting to get fouled, the shot clock turned over to 24 secs and seemed to be stuck there.

Then as the game clock continued to wind down, an interesting thing happened. The time left on the shot clock was HIGHER than the time left in the game. The shot clock was showing 24 secs while the game clock was at 23.6 seconds and counting down.

How can this possibly happen ?

By Design. This is right and exactly the way the NBA clocks are designed to work

Its because of the way the software for the shot clock is designed to work. When the shot clock starts counting down, it doesn't start counting at 24.0 seconds. It actually starts counting at 24.9 seconds. So when the shot clock changes from 24 to 23, that means the shot clock has counted down from 24.9 and has changed to 23.9.

This also means that when the shot clock shows 1 second left, there can be anywhere from 1.9 seconds to 1.0 seconds left. This approach allows the shot clock to go off and sound the horn as it turns from 1.0 to zero, having counted down 24 seconds from 24.9 to .9 . So there could be 1.7 seconds showing on the shot clock, .9 seconds left in the game and there still could still be a shot clock violation if a shot isnt off before there are .2 seconds left in the game.

If it wasnt done this way, we would have to have tenths of a seconds on the shot clock. Which could be better or worse , depending on your point of view.

Either way, the one ever present fact in NBA games is that the end of any quarter, its very possible to have more time on the shot clock than on the game clock, with the shot clock still in effect. So when you see this, it doesn't mean that there is a clock problem, it means the software is working as designed



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