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There is an old cliché:
"Those who Can, Do. Those who Can't, Teach."
This is meant to be a joke at the expense of teachers, indicating a conception common (until recently?) that those entering the teaching profession do so because they aren't any good at anything else.
Of course, that so-called witticism begs one basic question, namely:
How do those who Can, learn how to Do?
Are they wanting us to believe that they, each and every one, pull themselves up by their own bootstraps? That, in order to learn their trade, they reinvent the wheel each time?
That seems highly unlikely.
More likely, if they are able to do anything well, then they have been taught by at least one good teacher. And therefore, Teaching, incredible as it may seem, is something that, if one Can, then one Does it - just like any other profession.
Now there is another saying that I coined while teaching at a private school a few years ago. I think that, unlike the above saying, it has a sad veracity:
"Those who Can, Coach. Those who can't Coach, Time."
Private schools, I've found, like to wring as much out of a teacher as they can. So, when I started at one such school, not only was I the Math Department Chairman, but I had to teach five courses (the normal teaching load for a department chair in a public school is one course.)
And then I was given the job of Basketball Timer on top of all that.
Now I had never done this job before. And, when I was first presented with it, it seemed pretty daunting. It can also be scary because of the obvious public position of the scoreboard.
There are several tasks that one must juggle more or less together. The main two are:
• Keep the time clock. This includes stopping it for time-outs
and penalty whistles, then starting it again when play
resumes.
• Keep score. This changes often, of course. It is
embarrassing to have the wrong score up on the board,
which I did from time to time.
The other tasks, while subsidiary, are still necessary:
• Keep track of the number of fouls for each team.
• Keep track of the appropriate period.
• Keep track of the time elapsed in a time-out.
And, finally, the single most self-important task (I am jesting here):
• Blow The Horn when necessary.
The Horn! Who has not heard this sound in a field house and not been stirred by its clarion call to valor and sacrifice? More seriously, who has not listened objectively to this thing and not concluded that it ranks among the most obnoxious sounds ever devised?
The horn is the acoustical equivalent to sowing a field with salt. As soon as it begins to blare, all conversation - all sounds, in truth - are smothered, throttled.
Since this memoir is a confession, I will now confess something: I turned this awful instrument of aural torture to the advantage of our team. Here's how:
When a team calls a time-out, the Timer stops the clock up on the scoreboard, and begins a 20-second private clock, at the end of which the horn blows. Now the Timer has two alternatives here: he can use an automatic device which ticks off the required seconds and then blows the horn for a discrete second or two. Or he can time the interval on his own watch and then manually blow the horn.
I chose the latter, and here's why. I had noticed that, in general, opposing team coaches did not usually respect the 20 second limit: they would wait for the horn to cease, and then continue giving instructions to their players until the referee ordered them back onto the court. So I timed the 20 seconds myself, and then blew the horn by hand. The coach opened his mouth to give his players the climax of his instructions which were to be crucial to the next several minutes, perhaps to the game itself. But I kept my finger on that infernal button for many, many seconds. And I watched a frantic coach trying to speak, and the panicked looks on the faces of his players who could not hear him. Finally they gave up in despair and slinked back onto the court, their battle plans in disarray.
There are other things that a basketball Timer needs to know, the failure of which can cause undue embarrassment. For example, when a ball is inbounded, the clock is not to be started again until a player has touched the ball. It is especially critical to observe this rule when there is only a second left on the clock. (Fortunately, I learned that before such a situation came about!) I was told that players have been known to roll the ball the entire length of the court to a fellow teammate next to the basket.
I was never able to cultivate the requisite amount of -- objective distance -- from the action on the court. During one game an opposing player fell flat onto his back with a resounding smack. I felt that this young man may very well have broken his back, perhaps even paralyzed himself for life. So I watched with great consternation as the doctors went out to check him over. Then, abruptly, I heard our coach say, "Ted - clock!" I had left the clock running in yielding to the weakness of a human concern. (I estimated that over two minutes of game time evaporated that evening - to whose advantage, I was never certain. But surely not to my own reputation!)
As you can see, the Basketball Timer is wholly at the mercy of events on the court. A basket is made? Raise the score! A whistle is blown? Stop the Clock! It is all quite depressing, this needing to always react to events. (The situation with the horn is admittedly an exception, but these times lasted only a few seconds each.)
Frankly, once I had mastered the juggling of knee-jerk reactions (once, that is, they had become knee-jerk) which form the tasks of the Timer, I began to chafe at this state of affairs. I wanted to be in control of something Big and Overarching and Important! In point of fact, I wanted to control Time itself - or its passage thereof.
Now I know what you're probably thinking: no one, not even God, can control Time's passage. But heretically, hubristically, I found a way of doing this. I only had to make sure it was not detected by anyone.
Abraham Lincoln once famously said, 'You can fool all of the people some of the time'. So my stealthy goal became: to find those times.
Now when, I asked, does the Timer need to interfere with the inexorable and steady onrush of Time? Why, when one's team is losing, of course! Who hasn't felt the need for more time in such circumstances? (Come to think of it, who hasn't felt the need for more time in a variety of circumstances?!)
The principal problem for any plan of subterfuge concerning time, of course, is the public nature of the scoreboard. At any given moment, a statistical percentage of the spectators is glancing at the scoreboard. Of these, roughly half is looking at the time remaining. Given that, it would not be wise to simply stop the clock for even a few seconds at a time (although see below.)
But ah! Suppose the Timer were to punch little discrete holes in that otherwise-continuous flow of time? Here's the way I determined to do it: allow the clock to run for four seconds, then stop it for a second; then resume that pattern. This can be done by counting so: (on), 2, 3, 4, (off), (on), 2, 3, 4, (off), etc. In this way, what is five seconds in real time registers as only four seconds on the scoreboard. One's team thereby gains a second for every five seconds of play. Trivial? That comes out to five precious extra minutes for a full 20-minute half!
What, you are feeling greedy? Punch more holes in that continuum of time! Shut the clock off every four seconds and you have gained over seven extra minutes per period; stop it every three seconds and you gain ten minutes! But take care: the more holes you punch, the more likely you are to be detected. (Still, I can imagine an ultimate sort of greed in this vein: turning the clock off and on in successive seconds. In this case the clock would take on a slow-motion quality, a sort of southern languidness ('Mommy, is the clock tired?') And each period would be bloated to twice its normal length. Certainly suspicion may be aroused in such a case, especially when baby-sitter bills skyrocket!)
But there are people, believe it or not, who are indifferent to detection. A friend of mine told me of an away game he was attending. At one point the home team (which supplied the Timer) was behind. The Timer did not start the clock at all after a time-out. It was so obvious that it was assumed to be a faux pas. When my friend went over to inform the Timer, the latter told him curtly to mind his own business. This is known as the brazen approach to Timing subterfuge (although when it's this obvious, we might better call it super-tefuge!)
Such an obvious theft of additional time offends against one's aesthetic sensibilities. Is it too much to ask for a little finesse?! All in all, it seems best to cheat on a modest scale, as I first suggested.
On the other hand, suppose that the home team is doing so abominably badly that no amount of extra time would allow them to catch up. In that case, why prolong the agony? Why draw out the game and rub salt in the wounds, when all one wishes is to flee the fieldhouse as soon as possible? In such a situation it is up to the Timer to artificially dissipate time. This can easily be done at any moment when the clock is supposed to be stopped (remember that injured player?): penalty whistles, time outs -- even half times, when everyone is racing for bathrooms and refreshments (I am kidding about this last, of course: the clock is reset at half-time.) During those 'down' times let the clock run: the game will be over before you know it!
What? You want to be a bit more -- circumspect -- about it? Afraid some people might notice? Well then, choose those times when they're looking the other way. Penalty shots provide a good time for this. Just make sure the shots are being taken at the basket away from the scoreboard.
Since I have shown that it is possible to alter the clock to one's advantage, the astute reader (with a criminal mind) might ask whether the same -- bending -- can be brought to the score of the game. My answer to this eager request is: regrettably, no. And the reason for this is sitting right next to the Timer at the table: it is the Scorer, who, on special paper, keeps track of every play of the game: who made which basket, and so on. On the bottom of the page he keeps a running tally of the game score. And that tally is considered the correct one. (I have had the Scorer correct me on my score up on the scoreboard, which I'd then change right away. And I wasn't even trying to cheat!)
(The Scorer for our games was a student. But, unlike me, he was a seasoned professional at his craft – and one who wanted to do scoring as a career. He had more gravitas than I did (he seemed to have a world-weariness beyond his 18 years.) About two-thirds of the way through a typical game, he would suddenly remark to me, 'You know, this game has gotten really ugly!' This would surprise me, for I had not noticed any change in behavior on the part of the players – no fights or more frequent foul calls. It was halfway through the season before I realised that my distinguished colleague just liked saying the word 'ugly'.)
Did I ever actually implement these sorts of time-elasticity 'experiments'? I'm afraid not on any grand scale. But, I must confess, I did find myself playing around with it a bit, testing the proverbial waters, getting a feel for the lay of the land. What I found was that, given the frantic pace of a typical basketball game, those stopping/starting regimens are quite difficult to implement. Yes, difficult -- but not impossible. I got the feeling that, with a little practice, I might get very good at such -- deviant (literally, since one is deviating the time from its correct passage) -- behavior.
And before you assume that I would be too noble and upright to engage in such a thing, I should confess that, as the banker in Monopoly, I was once caught (I was totally open about it) having embezzled $5000 from the bank. In answer to the shocked inquiries of my family, I justified it thus: 'But it's absolutely in the spirit of the game!'
By the way: when I told a cousin of mine who owns a sports club about my plans to bend Time, he scoffed and said, 'That's nothing! A real feat would be to figure out how to bend Space!' That is, to be able to treat the court like a giant accordion. 'An opposing player drives for the basket and, just as he reaches it and goes airborne for his silly slam-dunk routine, you lengthen the court and pull the basket away from him. Now that would be something!' Sadly, I never did figure out a way to effect this bit of wizardry.
P.S. Recently [Summer 2007], the case of NBA referee Tim Donaghy has come into the news. Donaghy is alleged to have made questionable calls in crucial playoff games on which he had bet. Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports writes:
"Privately, NBA officials wish they could've seen a pattern within Donaghy's officiating to suggest that he could've been shaving points, but that hasn't been apparent to the naked eye. He consistently has been graded as one of the league's better officials, which is the reason he was assigned to five playoff games in the past two years.
"NBA officials, sources said, are painstakingly studying tapes from the past two seasons under FBI suspicion (2005-06 and 2006-07). It is believed that more than a dozen games could've been deliberately affected by Donaghy's calls, games where he and the mob associates had bet thousands of dollars on the point spreads.
"The fact that his performance reviews hadn't suffered these past two years reminded the league office how the manipulating of a game can be done in the most subtle of ways [emphasis mine], without alarming even the most educated eyes.
"'Remember,' one league official said Friday, 'the officials are graded nightly on the calls that they don't make, not just the ones they do.'"
Tim Donaghy – a man after my own heart!
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