![]() ![]() The term in question seemed to have originated by persons "dropping dimes" to homeless persons to make a phone call if needed, as pay phones at the time cost 10 cents. The passer is credited with an "assist" for this effort. A player does a lot of hard work, drawing multiple defenders to himself/herself, then passes the ball unselfishly to a teammate for an easy score. The term "dropping dimes" in basketball refers to an "assist". There are a lot of small similarities that might either have been the initial connection, or reinforced it once it was made by someone. You feed them, same as you feed a pay phone dimes. The other terminology is fairly similar a successful pass to someone that then scored off of it might be called "connecting with" that someone, for example, identically to if you connect a phone line. It's also possible that it simply was directly related to the cost of a phone call, of course. Wiktionary shows these meanings, for example, and all sorts of online discussions support this - but nothing meaningful as proof unfortunately. That apparently transitioned to assists in basketball. That was due to the cost of a pay phone call back then - $0.10 - which would be used to call the police. What I have found so far, is that it likely dates back to urban slang, popular on the east coast (which is commonly attributed to Philadelphia and the nearby environment), which described "assisting" the police in an investigation as "dropping a dime". ![]() There isn't really a verifiable source on this, unfortunately, without perhaps doing a ton of research of old television announcers. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |