An NBA Fun Fact - Blog Maverick (http://www.blogmaverick.com/2008/04/21/an-nba-fun-fact/)

Is it possible for the shot clock to have more time on it than the game clock ?

Those of you paying close attention to the Suns vs Spurs game might have noticed during the 2nd overtime, Ginobli grabbed a huge rebound and while he was expecting to get fouled, the shot clock turned over to 24 secs and seemed to be stuck there.

Then as the game clock continued to wind down, an interesting thing happened. The time left on the shot clock was HIGHER than the time left in the game. The shot clock was showing 24 secs while the game clock was at 23.6 seconds and counting down.

How can this possibly happen ?

An NBA Fun Fact - Blog Maverick (http://www.blogmaverick.com/2008/04/21/an-nba-fun-fact/)

I guess I had never thought about the fact that, because the shot clock (unlike the game clock) is not equipped to display tenths of a second, then (if there were no internal adjustment) when it got down to .9 seconds, the shot clock would display "0" for the next .9 seconds, at the conclusion of which interval the buzzer would off. Having the shot clock show 0 time left for a full .9 seconds would be confusing and weird. So what they have done to avoid this is to set the clock up internally so that it really starts at 24.9 seconds, even though it is showing 24 seconds. That way, as soon as the internal clock goes to .9 seconds (i.e., at the very instant the full 24 seconds are used up), the shot clock goes to zero and the buzzer goes off.

The fact that the shot clock does not display tenths of a second also means that when the shot clock is showing, say, 2 seconds left, we don't know whether this means that there is a full 2.0 seconds left to shoot or 1.1 seconds, or something in between. I wonder if this imprecision causes miscalculations by players that leads to shot clock violations.

Bitter, bitter.

I think swimming uses thousandths.- 00.000