[ilyazhito]

Have you heard about the 2-0 travesty between Bibb County and Brookwood in Alabama? Or the Waseca-Marshall girls game in Minnesota that ended 17-4 after 2 halves of play? These games are rare, but the NBA had seen enough of this nonsense way back in 1954 to decide to institute a shot clock for the next season. This is almost 65 years to the day that a shot clock was implemented in the NBA, yet only a few states have a shot clock (+ DC) on a permanent basis, and a few more states are currently experimenting with shot clocks at tournament games.

As a fan of basketball, I feel that a shot clock is necessary to avoid the possibility of this travesty reappearing.

As an official, I believe that the shot clock will improve the game, because I will have to make less decisions about deliberate fouls in the last few minutes of a relatively close (1-3) possession game, and certain rules would be simpler to administer. No one can accuse me of having a fast 10-second count if my count starts at 30 seconds on the shot clock and ends at 20! No one could accuse me of a fast 5-second count closely guarded if I start my count at 17 seconds and call a 5-second violation with 12 (or 11) showing on the shot clock. There will be errors by the officials and table personnel, but that is the cost of having a game played and administered by humans. It just falls on me and my partners to be more clock aware, because it would be more obvious that both game and shot clock fail to start than if just the game clock fails to start. My partners and I would just make the corrections as needed with both the game and shot clock, and instruct both operators carefully before the game (even though that would probably not affect the amount of errors).

I mentioned neutral sites because if postseason games use neutral sites with shot clock equipment, there is no cost to install (or bring in) shot clock equipment for those games.