Shaq is 1/20 from3 over his career. It's officially more likely in a given play for Shaq to BREAK THE HOOP than make a shot into it from more than 23 ft away.
It wasn't about whether a rim was breakaway or not, it was about the design of the basketball system in general and how the rim was mounted to the backboard that was causing the problem of breaking the glass. The basketball systems that sandwich the backboard in between the rim and a steel backplate with no spacing between the glass and the backing plate are going to be more likely to break the glass as all the pressure exerted onto the rim transfers to the backplate squeezing the glass in between. All of the backboards that have shattered from dunking or some other play are ones that are held up by support arms on each the left and right side of the backboard with only a square steel backplate on the back side of the glass to hold the rim on. The new design that is in use in every NBA stadium today that eliminates any chance of breaking the backboard has one main support arm that attaches to the bottom center of the backboard directly behind the rim. This design uses a backing plate that is slightly spaced away from the back of the glass backboard. There is four spacers that insert into the four mounting holes for the rim in the backboard and are long enough to allow a gap between the backboard and the backing plate so the bolts that hold the rim on go through the holes in the backboard and through the spacers to the backing plate. The backing plate is then bolted to the support arm on the rest of the system, and allows all of the forces and pressures to be transferred down through the rest of the system instead of all of the force and pressure being applied to a non spaced 6 inch x 6 inch square back plate that squeezes the glass backboard. With this new/current design any type of rim even the non breakaway type can be mounted to the backboard without any chance of breaking the glass. The breakaway rims nowadays are mainly used to be more forgiving on players rather than on the backboard, thus the NBA upgrading to the Spalding 180 degree breakaway rims about 10 years ago, so that when a player dunks weather it be on the front or now on the sides it will breakaway.
I'm a rim junkie and know about as much on each model as anyone. Yes, they are working. Given that the "modern" breakaway rim debuted in the NBA in 1981 (The Gared Snapback Arena Goal) and countless games have been played on that model and the numerous copy cat models, having a few "failures" here and there is to be expected and probably makes up well less than 1%. The examples you gave are not very good ones. The two Shaq examples, in particular, were not shattered backboards but rather failures of the goal supports. The failures typically seen at the high school level are due to those backboards being suspended from the ceiling thus having no support arm to mount the rim to (from the front side of the backboard). Breakaway rims flex at a maximum of about 45 degrees...this include the newer 180 rims (like the Spalding that the NBA switched to in 2009). Once they flex to that maximum(which is rare) the force is then transferred to the backboard. You'll notice that all the Spalding supports in the NBA have an arm that extends directly to the rim and the rim is mounted to that arm so any stress applied over what the rim is designed to handle then transfers to the arm which is more than capable of handling the force.
To be fair, since then they have started installing the rim to the actual metal beam instead of the glass so the stress isn’t put on the glass. If you look closely enough at regulation goals you can see that the rim and glass don’t touch anymore. Many places still do have the breakaway rims that are connected directly to the glass though.
Chuck connors: I broke a basketball ball backboard because of my shot Shaq: I broke the glass on a goal once, wait actually I brought the whole dang thing down :)
No because I went to dunk in my high school game and when I went to dunk I hung in the rim for 2 seconds and then I heard a little crack so then I let go and the rim flew up and the backboard shattered every where! I wish I had a clip I could show you.
Yes, breakaway rims work. It was those Hydra-Rib stanchions by Huffy and others like it that didn't work because the failure point was just a metal plate bolted on the glass backboard. Any structure that didn't attach itself onto the rim to transfer the force away from the glass were either auctioned off to rec centers or still operational with strict no dunking policies.
He is that kind of teacher that starts the lesson with "today we are going to learn about" then starts a whole story about the lessons and never gives a real answer just say "you tell me"
NBA now how springs with the metal on the back of the boards so it doesn’t snap, while some older break because they are just nails on the back, so there is no support for when someone brings the rim down. Some (most) high schools and some non d1 schools still have these older backboards which is why we don’t see breaks in the NBA, but it high school and college.
as someone who has broken 2 rims, i can say breakaway rims just prevent the backboard from breaking and shards of glass going everywhere, once i pulled it off of the mount and once i shattered the glass
