The Most High-Tech Basketball Whistle EVER 🛎️🏀
This is the most high-tech whistle ever created, and it helped one referee earn tens of millions of dollars. See, this is Mike Constable, a North Carolina native who followed in his dad’s footsteps and became a basketball referee in his early 20s. Now, Mike started working at the high school and college level before eventually becoming a full-time NBA ref in 1989, which for most people would be a dream job. But in just his second season, Mike had a realization that would end up changing the course of his life forever. See, Mike recalls a game he was refing in 1990 between the Milwaukee Bucks and the Philadelphia 76ers. It was a one-point game in overtime, and just as the clock was winding down, Mike called a foul on the Bucks. Now, according to Mike, he says that he blew his whistle before the final horn sounded. But since it takes a human timekeeper an average of 0.6 to 0.8 seconds to actually stop the clock, everyone in the arena thought the game was over. But then in a very unpopular decision with the Milwaukee Bucks, Mike put Sixer star Charles Barkley on the line with no time left on the clock where he would go on to make both free throws and win Philly the game. And while all the articles the next day talked about the guts it took for Mike to make that call, he had a much different takeaway and thought, “What if there was a better way to stop the clock?” So Mike got to work developing a way to replace human timekeepers. And by 1993, he had his first prototype of what he called the precision time system. The way it works is that each ref has a microphone clipped to their shirt that’s calibrated to the exact frequency of their whistle. This microphone is then wired into a small pack attached to each ref’s hip, which wirelessly stops the clock at the scores table when they blow their whistle and restarts it with the press of a button on the side of that same pack. And since each ref’s mic is tuned to a different frequency, the score knows exactly who blew the whistle and when. Now, early on, teams at every level were skeptical of Mike’s new system. So he began challenging them to use his precision time system and compare it to a human timekeeper to see who was actually more accurate. And the results were shocking because when you account for the 0.6 to 0.8 second reaction time across 60 to 80 whistles per game on average the human timeke keepers wasted 1 minute and 28 seconds of game time per game. Whereas Mike’s new system didn’t waste any. And this was all the proof the NBA needed to implement Mike’s precision time system ahead of the 1997 season, which has also now been adopted by dozens of other leagues across the world and even at the collegiate level, undoubtedly making Mike tens of millions of dollars in the process.
44 Comments
But still cant feed and house the poor.
Jersey number 34 😅
now they only have to make a more reactive whistle
Professional timekeepers: Wow. Thanks. MiKe…GrEaT jOb!
0:31 Ah yes! The amazing Milwaukee Fucks!
I understand that the invention is useful, but how is it worth 10's of millions of dollars?
So he's a Referee and an Engineer at the same time? WOW
Shout out to Mike
Crazy at my job a guy came up with a new alloy that was better than anything they were using. The idea was worth millions but because he worked there they legally took his idea and gave him 1 dollar for it.
Anything stopping people watching trying to match the whistle and stopping the game
I always thought tht was them turning on their mic wow
Can’t someone in the audience blow a whistle and trigger the system?🤔
Fascinating!
Nah, the results weren’t surprising at all if you just use common sense.
Nit hightech wisstke but a mic and a system that he used to listen to a wustke
How cool!
He created a problem for his own invention
Didn't knew Denzel W. is a basketball referee !!
How smart!
u sure dudes a native? doesnt look like that to me, tho Im not one to just assume ethnic heritage. anyway, just trying to spread awareness to the misuse of the word native.
AI doesnt replace humans. Humans who are slow gets replaced. Imagine if the time keeper were fast enough. Mike would never invent this
Ironically, he likely paved the way to AI to replace all refs entirely. 😂
But how many of these can you actually sell? It’s not there are millions of refs that use these.
Problem solving masterclass
A north carolina native? What tribe?
Always wondered what those things were on the refs back.
0.6s reaction time is giga slow
I will nitpick but the whistle is not high-tech
"North Carolina Native" hmmm idk man
Brilliant !
" where there is a problem there is opportunity"- Jack Ma
W for mike
Most time keepers will go back to the previous second once a whistle is blown. Just to make up for the error and because most Schools don’t have the money for that kind of system.
Everyday you learn something new. 🤌🏻
This is really a good story of creativity and innovation😊😊😊
Handball could use this
Mike developed a new whistle… Makes sense
The guy who created the fox 40 had his ass kicked in Mexico he came back home to America with a face looking like he was in a boxing match 😂😂😂 then created the whistle to improve the game 😂😂😂😂😂😂
Wow!!!!
Watch 0:31 – it says Fuck 34!
But now everything is reviewed – so the last 30 sec of game time are actually 45 mins.
The story of how this guy Mike put people out of a job.
This reminds me of the story of the dude who invented automated telephone transfers because the wife of his rival in the mortuary business was in charge of transferring phone calls so he made her job defunct.
find out who put the pee in it.