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just read this and found it quite interesting, it was something I did not know and assume most of us out there didn't know either.
According to NBA spokesman Tim Frank, the clock is stopped when the official blows in his whistle, period. The operator has nothing to do with it.
The operator can stop the clock on his own of course, but he is considered the back-up to the official. According to Frank, it’s rare that he would be the one to actually stop it. And in this case, he didn’t.
The whistle/clock-stopping device is called “Precision Timing.” The official starts the clock using a button on his belt but he stops it simply by blowing in the whistle. I asked Frank how this doesn’t happen all the time; if simply exhaling into a whistle will be enough to stop the clock, wouldn’t we see this more often?
He said first of all, that’s a guess on our part that an exhale is how the whole thing started. He said Stu Jackson will review the situation and try to determine exactly why a whistle was blown and who did it -- not that that information will be made public.
But he also said the whistles are made so that it’s not that easy to trigger them.
“They try to make them not that sensitive so if you blow,” Frank said, “you have to blow hard.”
That said, it has happened before, and it will happen again.
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