Absolutely fascinating timing systems failure today at Air Canada Center during the first NBA playoff game between the Toronto Raptors and the Brooklyn Nets.
These days, NBA shot clocks are fairly sophisticated. A console at the courtside Scorer's Table controls LED shot clocks hung above both backboards. The clock hardware in the timing console is integrated with air horns at either end, as well as LED arrays in the glass backboards. Once the clock reaches 5 seconds, it switches from whole seconds to running-tenths. At expiration, the air horns fire and the LED arrays around the perimeter of the backboards illuminate. In most cases, a slo-mo replay angle showing both the backboard and the ball convincingly shows whether or not the ball was still in the shooter's hand at expiration.
The two most popular manufacturers of these integrated shot clock systems amongst NBA teams are Daktronics and Whiteway.
In the 3rd quarter of this first game of the 2014 NBA Playoffs, the whole system at Air Canada Center failed. The backups didn't work either. So Air Canada Center resorted to using a guy with a hand-held stopwatch audibly counting down the seconds remaining over the Public Address system, shouting "HORN" at expiration.
Toward the end of the 4th quarter, somebody dug up a marine-rescue horn (a hand-held can of compressed air with a plastic horn on top) for the scorer to use.
Really. This in, arguably, the richest professional league in the world. A league where every team travels exclusively aboard its own chartered luxury jet.
The average NBA team player payroll is about $60 million a year. The average NBA stadium costs about half a billion dollars. The most expensive NBA stadium is the Barclays Center, home of the Brooklyn Nets, which cost close to a billion dollars to build.
http://www.sbnation.com/nba/20...ot-clock-malfunction
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