[BillyMac]

Stall tactics to limit big man George Mikan led to the shot clock's creation by the NBA. The NBA had problems attracting fans (and positive media coverage) before the shot clock's inception. Teams in the lead were running out the clock, passing the ball incessantly. The trailing team could do nothing but commit fouls to recover possession following the free throw. Frequent low-scoring games with many fouls bored fans. The most extreme case occurred on November 22, 1950, when the Fort Wayne Pistons defeated the Minneapolis Lakers by a record-low score of 19–18, including 3–1 in the fourth quarter. The Pistons held the ball for minutes at a time without shooting (they attempted 13 shots for the game) to limit the impact of the Lakers' dominant George Mikan. A few weeks after the Pistons/Lakers game, the Rochester Royals and Indianapolis Olympians played a six-overtime game with only one shot in each overtime: in each overtime period, the team that had the ball first held it for the entirety of the period before attempting a last-second shot.

Danny Biasone was the owner of the Syracuse Nationals. Biasone was convinced the problem could be fixed by capping the amount of time a team could possess the ball before attempting a shot. On April 22, 1954, facing a scoring drought of epic proportions, NBA owners voted to implement a 24-second shot clock. The decision changed the league and the game of basketball.

In men's collegiate basketball, there was initial resistance to the implementation of a shot clock for men's NCAA basketball, due to fears that smaller colleges would be unable to compete with powerhouses in a running game. However, after extreme results like an 11–6 Tennessee win over Temple in 1973, support for a men's shot clock began to build. The NCAA introduced a 45-second shot clock for the 1985-86 season. It was reduced to 35 seconds in the 1993–94 season, and to 30 seconds in the 2015–16 season. In the spring of 2021 the NFHS agreed to allow its member associations the option of a shot clock, with a mandatory 35-second duration, starting in 2022-2023.