it should be changed for two reasons:

1) we are relying on the judgement (and rules knowledge) of the shot clock operator to determine what is and is not a shot. (that usually doesn't work so well and causes more problems than we all would like). the shot clock operator should only have to decide: "did the ball hit the rim or not" rather than "did it hit the rim or not?...it did? was that a legal shot or something else?"

2) when the ball hits the rim and is erroneously reset, one of two things happen: a) the officials do not notice and we continue playing (so we're not really following the rule anyway), or b) the officials have to stop the game (thereby taking a scoring opportunity out of the hands of the offensive team), figure out what time "should" be on the clock (usually the table and game officials do not know exactly), and then we've got to restart the game (w/ a small amount of time left on the shot clock) and now we have the coaches yelling at the table personnel (as well as us).......

there's a simple, logical fix: ball hits the rim = shot clock gets reset. i would prefer that the shot clock operator only have to decide: "did the ball hit the rim or not?" rather than also have to decide: "by rule, was that a legal shot or something else?"

the NCAA rule book is 2-3 times thicker than the NBA rule book. it needs to be simplified and this is one rule that can easily be changed.

Interesting points...a couple of questions:

1) Do you really believe that the average basketball fan can't tell the difference between a pass and a shot attempt? What about the average shot clock operator?

2) How many times per game (your games, games you watch, etc) does the shot clock get reset incorrectly?

It just doesn't seem to me that this is really that big of a problem. And - again - your proposal will "reward" the offense with a reset when they haven't really "earned" it.

What do others on the forum think?

As a general rule a shot isn't a mystery. If everyone in the gym thinks it was a shot when the ball went up, 99.5% of the time it probably was.

As someone who works with a shot-clock in a lot of high school games - I counted 19 this season - trust me on this, I notice when there's a screw-up on a reset. I don't think the offense loses a scoring opportunity if I stop to correct the time. If they throw up an airball and get the rebound but the clock is reset incorrectly and I stop the game the offense just gets the time it should've had in the first place...whether it's 20 seconds or two seconds.

I think the NBA rule leaves more consistency and is the better of the two rules...but in practice, 99/100 plays are adjudicated the same way.

essentially, the resolution to the shot clock isssue (during the game/during the play) is worse than the simple change of the rule.

The OP says A1 shot an airball and B2 rebounded. That's Jay's confusion. Apparently the same confusion the shot clock operator had. ;)

Ah, I see what you're saying.

But I mis-read the mis-posting. I took the OP to mean it was rebounded by the offense, because:

If B (defense) had gotten the ball, why would they kick the ball out to reset the offense in their backcourt, and why would B's coach go nuts if they got a fresh 30 on their new possesion? Well, unless B's coach was going nuts that they weren't advancing the ball into their front court... :)

It seems a lot of people are confused over this play, and I include me. :D

It WAS rebounded by the offense, although I can't fault the shot clock guy for thinking the defense had it... watching on TV, I thought the defense had it for a second, but they didn't.

Only think I hate about the resolution of the problem is that the offense was not hurrying to score because they saw the clock and thought they had 30-something seconds to shoot - to suddenly say, NO, you have 2 seconds (or worse, if they had caught it 2 seconds later - NO, you lose the ball) would suck - especially in the situation when this happened.

Which is why I don't want shot clocks in HS. Here in the OP we had a problem which really was a legitimate error by the operator. Now take that to the high school level where these type of mistakes would be very prevalent. You would see a whole bunch of erroneous resets on plays where there shouldn't be really any confusion.

I agree. As I said earlier I work more than a few games with it in H.S. and I don't mind the clock in general but the biggest issue is getting people who can run it properly. Putting a high school kid on the shot clock who may - or most likely may not - be paying attention can cause more headaches than prevent them.