The Shot Clock Saved the NBA from a 19-18 Game
On November 22, 1950, the Fort Wayne Pistons won by holding the ball for entire minutes at a time — and nearly killed professional basketball.
On November 22, 1950, the Fort Wayne Pistons beat the Minneapolis Lakers 19-18 in an NBA game that lasted the regulation 48 minutes. The Pistons, facing a superior opponent, spent the game holding the ball and drawing fouls — a legally sound strategy under the existing rules, and a catastrophe for every fan in the building.
Attendance across the league was already declining. Games like that one accelerated the crisis. By the 1953-54 season, some matchups were degenerating into contests of endurance rather than basketball.
Danny Biasone, owner of the Syracuse Nationals, worked out a fix with a simple division. He noticed that exciting games tended to involve around 120 shots total — 60 per team. Divided into 2,880 seconds (48 minutes), that yielded 24 seconds per possession. He proposed a 24-second shot clock to the league.
The NBA adopted the rule before the 1954-55 season. In 1953-54, teams averaged 79.5 points per game. In 1954-55, that jumped to 93.1. The Syracuse Nationals won the championship that first shot-clock season, averaging 95 points a game. Biasone never took a patent or royalty — he just wanted the league to survive. It did.
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