The banned numbers in basketball
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- Опубликовано: 13 сен 2024
- Jeremy Fielding, Estefannie and Inés Dawson face a question about a sports shirt standard.
LATERAL is a weekly podcast about interesting questions and even more interesting answers, hosted by Tom Scott. For business enquiries, contestant appearances or question submissions, visit www.lateralcas...
GUESTS:
Jeremy Fielding: @Jeremy_Fielding, / jeremy_fielding
Estefannie: @Estefannie, / estefanniegg
Inés Dawson: @DrawCuriosity, / ineslauradawson
HOST: Tom Scott.
QUESTION PRODUCER: David Bodycombe.
RECORDED AT: The Podcast Studios, Dublin.
EDITED BY: Julie Hassett.
GRAPHICS: Chris Hanel at Support Class. Assistant: Dillon Pentz.
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FORMAT: Pad 26 Limited/Labyrinth Games Ltd.
EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: David Bodycombe and Tom Scott.
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When Tom started mentioning electronic signals, I was hoping Jeremy would tell him the issue wasn't electronic, it was digital.
It’s worth noting that this rule was recently changed-as in, this month.
Starting in the 2023-24 season, 0, 00, and 1-99 will all be allowed
Yep. It was announced by the NCAA on June 8, 2023, that starting in the 2023-2024 season, players will be allowed to wear any number from 0-99.
@@DCmetrogreen Do you guys know perchance why 00 is permitted, but 01 through 05 aren't? And do the new rules allow 01 through 09?
They finally found enough people with 10 fingers on each hand
@@cykkm to signal player 1 you display 0 in on hand and 1 in the other, so 01-05 are allowed, but there's no way to differentiate 01 from 1.
@@jerrik-415 Just raise only one hand, since I'm guessing the difference between 0 and 00 has to be having only one hand raised in a fist instead of two.
The original baskets were wooden peach hampers and yes, it took several years before someone thought to cut the bottom out of the hampers.
I suppose having the ball land in made it much clearer it went in. That's why they have nets still instead of just the hoop, surely?
Well that guy needed his baskets back!
Probably because the ladder salesmen objected :)
Jeremy making emphatic gestures with his hands, right into the camera, while saying "you're so close, I almost don't want to stop you," almost feels deliberate. It was fun to watch.
1:06 "All the funny numbers are away from that list" wdym Tom, 42 is clearly on there and it's the funniest number ever
@@AltoclarinetsThe answer to life, the universe and everything.
@@anttibjorklund1869 I always thought there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe.
@@frenk051 It's a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference.
Honestly I thought it was weed joke
I immediately said "34, Tom!"
This one stumped me badly because I come from a culture with very standardized hand signs for the numbers 6-9, so the fact this was a problem never occurred to me.
Well solved.
Interesting. Chinese?
Here I was thinking "why would you design a system that can only count to five?" Then I realized that I am the problem.
So why did you design hands that way?
Internationally they just signal the score bench numbers sequentially, showing the back of the hands first for the tens digit then the front of the hands for the ones.
(11-15 are different though, clenched right hand to represent 10 and the left hand showing the remainder, I think that comes from when players were only allowed 4-15).
I wonder why they don’t just mic up the refs and allow them to talk to eachother during the game as well as the eyes in the sky and the scorers table.
They could avoid a lot of bad calls if they could communicate better.
in china, there's a cultural way to count to 9 on just one hand. Super useful. It's basically hand signals that everyone agreed upon. can't explain via text well but for example: the telephone hand gesture but facing up is six, and finger guns at an diagonal angle is 8. Every single first gen chinese person I asked about knows this. Also people from taiwan but there's some slight variation, but still understandable.
Another simple system is to simply count like usual starting from the index finger and using the thumb as a +5.
You can count to 10? It’s the thumb out fingers closed
It's based on the shapes of the Chinese characters for the numbers.
Sign languages also have a method of counting with one hand. 1-4 use your fingers only, 5-9 start with your thumb. But you could count a lot higher by using binary numbers.
You can count to 31 on one hand (and 1023 on two) simply by treating each finger as a bit in a 5-bit / 10-bit (binary) number. It does create the issue of which is the LSB and which is the MSB (which will depend on which way you're facing). Also, it does mean you'll never get laid.
Is there a reason this is unique to "US college" basketball?
Edit: I Googled and found this "...the reason the rule had survived [in the NCAA] was a matter of maintaining integrity and simplicity, ensuring that there was no confusion in the only sport that tracks its players by uniform number for disqualification. The N.B.A. uses the same system, but for some reason has not been hung up on the number of hands used to make the signals. (Jersey sales might have something to do with it.)"
So basically, it's just the way it is...
Probably too many players in non-college teams for this rule to exist
I know in professional football (soccer...) when a substitute is called, they use a digital display with their shirt number on it. I'd imagine that would be a costly device to use in college sport and also substitutes are rolling in basketball too.
I knew this one!! Managing high school basketball coming in handy for once
It's like base 6. Tom Scott has talked before (on Numberphile) about languages with different number bases and different hand gestures/body tally systems.
Many Canadians will point out that though, yes, it was invented at an American YMCA, the inventor himself was Dr. James Naismith, proud son of Almonte, Ontario.
Considering it didn't cross his mind to put a big enough hole at the bottom of the baskets to let the ball fall through, I'm not sure Ontario should be that proud.
@@RFC3514that guy needed his baskets back!
Things always look obvious after the fact.
Naismith was in Springfield, Massachusetts at the time, but yes he was Canadian.
Canadian millennials who grew up constantly seeing Heritage Minute PSA's on TV in the 90's are screaming right now
As a huge basketball fan who knew the answer before the video, I'm just fascinated by the discussion!
It's really amazing to see such smart people trying to figure out the answers, thia show is so fun
I thought it was some pedantic form of ambiguity because 7 could be close to 1, while 6, 8 and 9 were numbers other than 0 that formed loops. Though that would only make sense if it was in something like shirt companies refusing to change their janky fonts or something.
It's really fun going back and just watching how many times they use their hands to count, even from the first explanation of their ideas.
That was a good one. My first guess was going to be about 6 and 9 being hard to read upside down
Do basketball players often stand on their heads in Maryland? 😉
If a basketball player is upside down on the court, they have other problems.
i knew this from playing basketball in grade school!
I'm thrilled to know an answer ahead of time to see how the panel gets there
Nice to see Inés again ! Been missing her videos :)
This is another question that I knew the answer to from a Weird Rules episode on Secret Base
Ah yes! I was trying to remember where I knew it from. Thanks.
what's the first one?
been into japanese hs baseball lately so i thought it might have something to do with position numbers or something. All baseball positions have a number 1-9 starting from the pitcher all the way to right field, and in japanese hs baseball the starters' numbers will all be their position number (so for example, the starting shortstop will be number 6, the starting catcher will be 2, etc), and benched players take numbers 10-20 in order of seniority/skill/whatever the coach decides
Well done Tom. It only took you two minutes longer than it took me! Although my response when I realised was exactly the same and the only reason I thought of it at all was because I was flexing my hand and it twigged
Jan MIsali stoked right now to learn that US college basketballs operates entirely in base 6
I am so proud of Tom
Lateral is always so interesting with questions like this, because you have incredibly smart people trying to figure out the answer but the question is from an area with a gap in their knowledge. So its wild to see these crazy guesses for something that you the viewer might now the answer to
Who else knew this because of sb nation
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Pretty sure this is the second lateral sb nation overlap
Saw the thumbnail and instantly came here looking for this comment. 😅
I mean I knew this because of noticing it while avidly watching high school basketball in high school, but yes SB nation covered this well
Maybe I did?? I don't remember.
the NBA (US National Basketball Assosiation and also FIBA (Fédération internationale de basket-ball) permit numbers from 1-99 including 0 and 00 for quite some time
the FIBA some time ago only allowed 4-15 (as there are only 12 players per team and 1,2,3 are used to indicated scored points)
the numbers 4-12 use the traditional FIBA 2 hand system with a fist representing the 10s while other numbers use "new system" with the front and back of the hand to represent 10s-digit and 1s-digit
Regarding the reitred numbers, recently the NBA retired the number 6 throughout the whole league for Bill Russell, who was the winningest player ever and a civil rights activist
1891 Springfield Mass.
It was invented in the US as a game that could be played in doors in the winter.
The really surprising part is how long it took for them to realize if they cut out the bottom of the basket they wouldn't have to climb up a ladder after every score.
Basketball Hall Of Fame is in Springfield, MA and Naismith is credited with "inventing" the game in that city.
It is international, but primarily American. That said it did become super popular in former Yugoslavia, which is where (now NBA Championship winner) Nuggets star Nikola Jokić is from.
still the direction/order may be confusing
I always heard a loose version of basketball was played by the Aztecs, allegedly with a human head encased in latex.
Jumped the gun.
Jeremy Fielding's on this? Awesome!
I knew this immediately
I did think along the lines that Tom did, that maybe the jersey manufacturers, no doubt using iron-on digits, would only have to have supplies of 6 different digits (0-5) available to them, and not the full ten digits, which potentially reduces the amount of their supplies of not-yet-ironed-on digits (and the amount of money tied up in them) to 60% of what it otherwise would be. I think Jeremy misunderstood Tom though as the number of digits being applied to any given jersey (which as Jeremy said could still be two digits) wasn't what Tom meant
I am pretty sure basketball jerseys are printed entirely (team name, player name and everything) and nothing is ironed on.
Basketball was invented at Springfield College in Massachusetts, volleyball is a YMCA invention created as an offshoot.
Hey, Tom, that question went even in the field of linguistics...
Oh heck. I did not get this one.
I once visited a city named Springfield, MA which afaik was claimed to be the birthplace of modern Basketball. There was a museum or something.
Basketball Hall of Fame is in Springfield MA. I drive by it all the time.
Indeed! The invention of Basketball, and the Birthplace of Dr. Seuss are two of Springfield's claims to fame.
My first guess: College Basketball is limited to these numbers, because the NBA would have the other ones (below 100 that is -- so that would make NBA jersey numbers be 6-9, 16-19, 26-29, 36-39, 46-49, 56-59 and 60-99).
I too know nothing about basketball, so let's see how far off I am.
EDIT: completely wrong, but it was a nice hypothesis.
BEST thing I did yesterday : subscribe to this channel. it keeps popping up, let's goooo!
If they used binary they could have 0-1023.
Digit up = 1, digit down = 0.
People who can't independently move their ring finger might struggle though.
I'm amazed nobody thought they could just use both hands to communicate the first digit of a player's number, and then the second digit.
Idly curious which is a 25 and which is a 52? Is it read from your perspective or from that of the other person?
Depends on the ref. In my local group, refs signal one handed, but I've seen it done both ways
3:15 Tom, "I nearly got that right" is a fancy way of saying you didn't get it right.
4:36 I have my first guess. It has to do with striped African animals with hoofs.
Whew, I was right.
There was once I ran a traffic light about ten minutes before sunset. Driving up hill the suns brightness was lined up with the light and exactly like a magician’s trick, the whole traffic signal disappeared.
Blind guess: I know very little about BB. The issue seems to be about it ending in 6-7-8-9. But then, there is no "60 to 65, 70 to 75, ...". Was the number capped at ~55 because no team could ever have more than that amount of registered player?
Edited: yup, that isn't coherent. But maybe it has some basis...
That one flew me by. I didn't get near thinking about perspective.
Those ranges of numbers provide 37 unique options. College teams never have more than 25 players on their roster (dressed for games or practice squads) and they don't retire numbers, so those were sufficient for an entire team.
Is that the guy from smartereverydays latest video? Edit they showed his name I’m pretty sure that’s him. Crazy.
That "High Five" shouldn't go unacknowledged 🖐
I'm going to state here as my (almost certainly-correct) guess (yup, pulling a Tom on this one, although I don't follow ANY basketball, let alone the NCAA version thereof, and therefore have no idea of the weird minutiae of the rules*), without watching the whole video (I'm at 3:32 right now) that this rule exists because the numbers specified are the only ones that can be indicated with the ten fingers on a ref's two hands (probably to indicate which player to assign a foul to in a raucous arena where long-distance verbal communication is impossible). This is purely a guess based on the normative biology of human hands, not on my extremely limited knowledge of sports.
*Obviously I know the main rules from playing the game in Phys. Ed. class in school...2 point shots, 3 point shots, fouls within the curved line thing that result in 2 (sometimes 3?) free throws worth 1 point each, bounce the ball on the ground in order to move, traveling (and how players flout this rule with some regularity), etc. But I couldn't tell you much more than that.
And you are correct. When I was in HS I did the PA announcing for our HS basketball team and sat right next to the scorer. When the gym was loud, the only way to tell who the ref called the foul on was the hand signals, even though he was standing about 6 feet away.
I remember this question was once played on a Russian game show "What? Where? When?"
As always Estefannie being one of the most wholesome people ever🥰!! @Estefannie
I went the tennis route "is it because when basketball was invented, people were still counting in base 5, and it's a relic of this that we have kept?"
Just like tennis has a lot of slang associated with counting in base 12
Alright I'll bite, what base 12-related slang is in tennis? I'm curious
@@joec2221I don’t know if it counts as base 12, but supposedly the scoring comes from the points being shown by a clock. So if you win your first point of a game the hand is moved to quarter past (i.e. 15) and so on until you won the game with 4 points and were back at “o’clock”. And when deuce was introduced, 45 was moved to 40 so they had room to show “advantage” at 50.
What part of tennis is base 12?
Points are 15, 30, 40, and 60 (tho 60 are rarely seen as you win the game then move on to the next one immediately), and all come from the distances used in palm, or palm game (jeu de paume), the game tennis was heavily inspired by, as players scored more points, they would move 15, 30, and 40 feet closer to the center of court, the court itself was 90 feet long
Sets are base 6, as in 6 games to win a set, with some exceptions in case of tie breakers where a 2 point advantage is necessary to win a set
The only "slang" in tennis are love (0, no point), deuce (2, both players have 40 points and need to score twice to win the game), and all (point tie)
@@MrNicosaure I'm still not seeing any base 12 here. Also sets aren't base 6 since if they were then a 7-6 tiebreak win would be recorded as 11-10. Edit: wait, I see; I thought you were replying to me. My misunderstanding 😛
Sorry everyone, I might have been wrong on this one. I thought tennis has base 12 things, but apparently I was just mistaken. Or maybe it's its predecessor the "Jeu de Paume", but that might be wrong. Or it's base 15, or base 20 (which was apparently the base used in Gaul before the Romans arrived)
I knew this from detective conan manga out of all places heh
what a cool fact
I always thought basketball was invented in Canada but apparently it was invented in Massachusetts by a Canadian
I always heard that Canada invented basketball, I was also taught that we invented the telephone too though so I might have some incorrect information. If there's one sport I'm fairly sure we invented it's lacrosse.
James Naismith was Canadian. He just came to the US before inventing the game.
@@lightningpastry2153 Weeeell sort of. It was invented by a Canadian living in the US, and the first people to play it were American.
so they write their numbers in base 6
and this is exactly one of the good arguments in favour of base 6
I knew this one, but only because when I was in HS, I did the PA announcements for my HS basketball team and I sat right next to the scorer, so I saw the refs do it all the time.
Why specifically college basketball, though?
Probably because this is/was only true for college basketball. I am a basketball referee in Germany, where we play according to FIBA rules and all numbers from 0-99 are allowed.
My first thought was that they are using 6 as the base of the number system... I was kind of right 😅
What I find amazing is they know about Aztec death sports, but they don't know anything about the 2nd most popular sport in the world. Basketball has worldwide popularity.
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at @5:20 it clicked for me...
I'm strongly opposed to retiring numbers! There's something about a new player getting a number with a lot of history behind it and living up to the pressure, or certain clubs or international teams having a certain number that develops special meaning because of the legends who have worn it. Look at number 7 for Manchester United for example, or number 10 for Barcelona and Argentina.
Retired doesn’t always mean it will never be used again. When Payton Manning went to Denver they let him use a retired number because that’s the one he always had. I think the player agreed also.
🤓🤓Only and all 2-digit base 6 numbers.
🤓🤓Because back when rule was created one of the three racks in the college's mainframe died!!! 💡
🤓🤓But that doesn't explain why 00 is allowed, but not 01 through 05 🤔
What do you mean, you can make 0 with your hand, you don't need a dedicated finger for it.
And yeah technically they could include 6 too with pinky and pointer fingers lifted, so when number 66 has to come out it'll be rock on dudes! xD
@@HunterDigi “include 6 too with pinky and pointer fingers lifted” - Why stop at 6? There are 2⁵=32 combinations of extended/folded fingers on one hand. You can signal one duotrigesimal digit with the 5 fingers of one hand! 🤓
The refs just need a 5-minute lesson on American Sign Language, which has a simple and easy to understand system for 6 through 9 with one hand. It's a shame it's not widely known, it should be taught in school.
Palm facing away, fingers up, touch thumb and pinkie for 6, thumb and ring finger for 7, thumb and middle finger for 8, and thumb and index finger for 9.
My mind immediately went to "What, US people can't count past 5? Wait, do they use fingers to count? Oh."
Inés had some very-clever guesses! Wrong, but clever.
it's so an referee can tell the scoring table what player has committed an offence with a single hand. The first number is given palm forward, then turn their hand over to show the second with the back of the hand. This may not be correct today. My last involvement with NCAA basketball was in the late 1970's.
This was physically painful to watch... I instantly knew the answer to this question.
Gee, if only there were an entire language that's already been created where people could display any number using two hands... Gosh, I'm trying to think of what it's called, but I can't hear the answer. If only someone would give me a sign.
Or, indeed, several such languages.
That would require that everyone involved in a game of college basketball learn how to count in sign language. Which isn't a bad thing, but it's easier to just limit the numbers
However, whilst it ws invented in the US, it was invented by Dr James Naismilth, a Canadian.
It is so frustrating to see all their wild hand gesturing and they still don't get it.
Im pretty sure they recently changed this rule so that the refs dont have to play barefoot when they run out of numbers.
Such a shame that there’s no human sacrifice in sport anymore.
Oh, there is. I mean, not necessarily _deliberate,_ but...
Of course if we used Fingermath, we could count to 99 on our fingers…but that's none of my business.
I thought it was because six was scared because seven eight nine
Not me getting confused because ASL signs 0-9 on one hand... 😂😂😂
Reminds me tangentially of open outcry market hand signalling.
but you CAN display all 10 digits with a single hand. Refs have to know a lot of other signals for their sport anyway, why not teach them some sign language too?
Because they didn't do that and came up with a different system.
Basketball was invented by a Canadian: James Naismith
Thanks to Canadian Heritage Minutes, a whole generation was shouting this answer at the screen.
@@curiousfirelythat guy needed his baskets back
And it never occurred to anyone involved to ask the Deaf community how they communicate numbers?
To avoid spoilers, I will hide this comment, but,
It's ironic that everyone in this video is using their hands while talking.
7:00 "If you’re holding up a 2 and a 5, per se…"
Uhm … that’s not at all how you use that term.
Watching Europeans make totally ignorant statements about basketball must be almost as irritating as watching Americans make totally ignorant statements about soccer, err football.
Why can't they have 0-31 to communicate on fingers like normal people?
I thought this was going to be a variant on the 6 is afraid of 7, because 7 ate 9, joke...
Why couldn't the refs use sign-language numbers? I'm pretty sure all of the single digits only need one hand.
But then all the refs, coaches, players, etc. would have to learn sign-language numbers. No way! We couldn't possibly force people to learn things in college (sarcasm)!
Because they are difficult to read. Just like eg. binary numbers, which would cover all two digit numbers easily.
"invented" in the US...by a Canadian
Oh, Ines is going with long hair again
Basketball is one of the original American games, not invented by someone else like the Brits or Romans.
It's technically Canadian since Naismith, the inventor of the game is Canadian 😂
Sometimes I wish there would be more people lying in these videos. Two of these people lying would be juuust right.
Basketball was invented in Canada, btdubs or at least by a Canadian
If the answer is what I think it is, this is the easiest question on the history of this show.