SPRING WISRD MAGAZINE, VOL 6, ISSUE 2

Basketball and the Quest For Efficiency By Max Aronoff-Sher

When people talk about basketball they typically do not ment ion the math and physics behind it . Perhaps this is due to the count less movies, shows, and books that show the stereotypical ?jock?who makes fun of the stereotypical ?nerd? solely for being smart . Even when watching the game, it appears to be purely physical. However, this could not be further from the truth. As the availability of complex technology increases, NBA teams are taking full advantage of it and turning a game that is, at first glance, unsophist icated and raw into a sport of fine calculat ions in the ever last ing search for peak efficiency. In the ear ly 1950s, the NBA had a problem. Teams were taking leads in the game and then merely holding on to the ball unt il t ime ran out . This went against everything the newly founded league was built on. Basketball was supposed to be a fast-paced sport that kept spectators on their toes, and teams holding the ball for minutes was quickly bor ing the fanbase. This was an ear ly case of teams using loopholes in the rules to gain advantage over their opponents. Our team isoutmatched. Well, the other team can?t beat us if they can?t even get the ball . This thinking became increasingly popular, and after a game in 1954 where neither team

eclipsed 20 points, the league knew it was t ime for a rule change. Danny Biasone was the owner of a team called the Syracuse Nat ionals, and he was tasked with finding the solut ion and had the idea of implement ing a t imer on each possession. This would limit teams to a certain amount of t ime before they needed to take a shot . Biasone determined that in the most entertaining games, each team took 60 shots, so he came up with the equat ion of 48 (minutes in a game) mult iplied by 60 (seconds in a minute) and then divided that number by 120, which is the ideal number of shots (60) mult iplied by the number of teams (2). This yielded 24 seconds, which became the league?s first shot clock, and was implemented the very next season. It was a major success: in the first game under the new shot-clock, the winning team scored 98 points, a significant increase from the sub-20 scores seen the pr ior season. Although the shot clock was an ear ly math-based decision on the league?s behalf, the real data revolut ion began with individual teams. In 1979, the NBA introduced the three-point line. This was revolut ionary on mult iple fronts. Not only did its introduct ion drum up excitement for a league that needed a

4