When it was first adopted, the 24-second shot clock put a lot of excitement into the NBA and not all of it had to do with shooting. In the early years the clock was on the right baseline of each basket instead of at the top of the backboard. A referee often would run backward to follow a play and the crowd would be delighted when the referee tripped and fell over th clock. The players kind of liked that too.

But they didn't always have the last laugh. When a player was trying to save the ball from going out of bounds, he could also trip over the clock. That was comical when it happened to the other team, but not so funny when you were the one involved.

The clock was also used to increase the home-court advantage. In certain arenas, the power plug would be pulled accidentally on purpose to help the home team. All of that ended when the league move the shot clocks to their current positions above each basket.

You can never overstate the importance of the clock. If it had never been brought into the league, then we never may have known just how good someone like Michael Jordan really is. Opponents would have played keep-away against him. A team with an early lead against a more-skilled opponent would just freeze the ball. We rarely would have seen the skills of the great players to the extent that we do now.

Interestingly, the man who gave us the clock never played a second of professional basketball. In fact, few fans have heard of Danny Biasone, but the man has made contribution to every NBA game player for more than four decades.

Biasone invented the 24-second shot clock, which the league employed for the first time on Oct. 30, 1954. And 50 years later, it remains one of the most popular and important features of the pro game -- heck, even colleges decided they needed a clock, although theirs is 35 seconds.

At the time, Biasone was the owner of the Syracuse Nationals, the teams with which I spent nine seasons as a player. He was an Italian immigrant and a terrific guy. Biasone came into the league in an era when club owners had other family-owned business interests outside of basketball, but nothing like the conglomerates of today. Biasone owned a successful bowling establishment in Syracuse.

Yet, Biasone was more than an accomplished businessman, he loved basketball and was a purist of the game. As much as any owner of his time, he understood the game and why people liked it. It came as no surprise to anyone who knew him that Biasone would be the one to come up with the brilliant idea of a time limit for each ball possession.

In the eight years of play before the clock, a concern had developed around the league about the flow of the game. In those days, when a team led late in a game, an opponent had virtually no choice except to foul in order to gain possession of the ball. Otherwise, a team would dribble out whatever time was left in the game. As ballhandlers became more skilled, it was apparent tha the tactic slowed the game and lessened the fan interest.

That was never more obvious than in one particular playoff game in 1953. Boston's Bob Cousy, who was one of the first great ballhandlers in the league, converted 10 field goals but scored 50 points -- 30 of them free throws in 32 tries. Those numbers still stand as the single-game records for fre throws and free-throw attempts in a playoff game.

Before then, in 1950, the Fort Wayne Pistons held the ball against George Mikan and the Minneapolis Lakers, and won, 19-18. When a growing number of fans became more bored than excited about the finals minutes of a game, it was obvious to Biasone, among others, that something had to be done about it.

Danny Biasone, who died in 1992, was posthumously selected for the Naismith Memorial Hall of Fame in 2000. NBA Photos

Biasone understood the difference between the college and pro games. Whereas local fans would support most college teams regardless of the product, pro teams had to appeal to those who pair to see a more advanced talent level. The last thing anyone wanted to do was water down that talent level because of the rules of the game. So Biasone arrived at the idea of a shot clock as a way to prevent teams from holding onto the ball and to produce more excitement.

People might think that Biasone used some complicated formula to arrive at 24 seconds, but what he did actually was quite simple. He too the number of seconds in a regulation game (2,880) and divided that by the average number of ball possessions for both teams (120). Twenty-four turned out to be the magic number.

At first, people didn't realize just how much impact the shot clock would have on the game. What was apparent was that everybody would like it once they realized how much more action it generated. There was no reason not to like it.

From an X's and O's standpoint, the shot clock changed the mindset of the offense more than anything. No longer could teams afford to be passive, casually advancing the ball down the court then dribbling it here and passing it there. They had to be more aggressive and attack the basket. In 1954-1955, when the shot clock made its debut, teams averaged nearly 14 more points per game than they did in the previous season. Boston became the first NBA team to average more than 100 points per game.

The shot clock was used in preseason games, so the players had a chance to get used to it. As I recall, there were about two or there shot clock violations per game, not nearly as many as one would expect. Personally, I didn't find it to be a very difficult adjustment. Because I was a rookie at the time, I didn't know what it was like to play without it -- at least at the pro level. Besides, as a center, I usually was one of the last guys to touch the ball.

The rest of the team certainly didn't mind the shot clock, either. Not that it was Baisone's primary motivation for the shot clock, but the Nationals won the NBA title that season. With guys such as Earl Lloyd, Red Rocha, Dolph Schayes and Paul Seymour, our team had plenty of talent. In order to take full advantage of that talent, we needed to get the ball back in order to score, so in that regard, the shot clock worked to our advantage.

Defensively, our head coach, Al Cervi, considered the shot clock to be sixth man on the court. His theory was: The quicker we made a defensive stop, the more time we had would have to play to our strength at the other end. That season we allowed juts under 90 points per game, the lowest total in the league. We knew we could get our share of point, because we had plenty of scorers.

In my opinion, the shot clock was one of the two best inventions ever adopted by the league, the other is the three-point field goal. What's amazing is that, after all these years, the number of second a team has to take a shot remains the same. It's not the 18-second shot clock or the 30-second clock but the 24-second clock. Even with the defense different than they were years ago, there's still enough time for teams to get into their offensive sets.

Danny Biasone no longer is with us. Yet, in another way, he probably will be with us for as long as the NBA is in existence. Because every time the 24-second shot clock begins the countdown, we have him to thank for it.

Writer Paul Ledewski of the Daily Southtown (Chicago) helped John Kerr prepare this story.