FIBA – Krzyzewski: “USA should adopt FIBA shot clock in youth competitions”

DURHAM – USA National Team head coach Mike Krzyzewski has called for American basketball to take a page out of the international game and implement the use of shot clocks in its youth competitions.

Krzyzewski, who led the USA to a gold medal at the FIBA World Championship in Turkey earlier this month, pointed to the fact that international players have been accustomed to playing with the 24-second shot clock from an early age.

“They’ve been doing it since they were little. They weren’t in any stall games, they weren’t in any games where people were holding the ball. It’s a consistency of rules that I think helps,” he said on his radio show ‘Basketball and Beyond’ of adopting a shot clock in high school and summer tournament.

“I think it would help our game. It would help our game immensely if we had the same rules.”

The three main levels on which basketball is played in the United States – high school, NCAA and the NBA – abide by drastically different rules, particularly in relation to the shot clock.

The NBA operates the 24-second shot clock that is found in the international game per FIBA’s rules.

In the collegiate ranks, the shot clock is set at 35 seconds and is for the most part inexistent at the high school level as well as in summer/AAU competitions.

FIBA adopted the 24-second shot clock in 2000.

FIBA