It was the shot heard round the basketball world because of the horn that didn’t. It would help lead to a change in the accuracy of the basketball game clock.
On Christmas Day 1984, Chaminade and No. 4 SMU were locked in a tight battle at the Blaisdell Arena with the Mustangs leading 70-69 with 12 seconds to go. Following a missed shot by Chaminade and a turnover by SMU, time appeared to have expired with zeros showing on the clock.
However, because the horn hadn’t gone off, referees allowed the Silverswords to inbound the ball. Mark Rodrigues was supposed to lob it to Tony Randolph, but Randolph wasn’t open, so Rodrigues got the ball to Keith Whitney, who scored on a touch fadeaway jumper as the horn sounded. It gave the Silverswords a 71-70 victory over the Jon Konak-led Mustangs.
The timer at that game — and at hundreds of others for more than 30 years at the Honolulu International Center (later renamed Blaisdell Arena) — was Tadashi Tadani, who died Friday. He was 84.
"He was the guy with the fastest fingers … maybe the slowest for that one game," said former Chaminade coach Merv Lopes, whose NAIA Silverswords upset four nationally ranked NCAA teams in three years. "The horn hadn’t gone off. There was a fraction of time left.
"We had some interesting games with that group of guys but that game (with SMU) changed the whole way game clocks were. They added tenths of seconds after that."
Tadashi was a basketball referee before he became the arena scoreboard operator for various sporting events, including Hawaii basketball games of the Fabulous Five era of the early 1970s, Rainbow Wahine volleyball, roller derby, boxing, MMA, the Harlem Globetrotters and Chaminade’s upsets starting with No. 1 Virginia in 1982.
Tadashi was born on Oct. 31, 1930, in Waimea, Kauai, and captained the basketball team at Waimea High. He served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War.
Known as "T.T.," Tadashi also was a parks and recreation supervisor for the City and County of Honolulu and worked the front desk at Windward Bowl in the 1960s. Upon retirement, he opened TT Ceramics & Propane in Kaneohe, continuing his passion for pottery-making until a stroke in 1999.
"My dad looked intimidating but he was a really funny guy once you got to know him," said his son, TV personality Tiny Tadani. "But he took his sports seriously.
"When my brother and I played Little League baseball and PAL basketball, he made us read the rule book front to back before we could actually play the game."
Tadani also is survived by son Tad; daughters Marilyn Kaneko, Darlene Toyofuku and Windy Cummings; brothers Makoto and Satoru Tadani; sisters Emiko Wo and Satsuki Inouye; seven grandchildren; and three great-grandchildren.
Services will be held on Kuhio Day, March 26, at the Blaisdell Arena concourse area from 11 a.m. to noon. The family requests no flowers and casual attire.
"Instead of a 21-gun salute, we will sound the scoreboard horn one last time in honor of my dad," Tiny Tadani said.
CORRECTION: The horn that failed to go off at end of the 1984 Chaminade-SMU basketball game was triggered automatically. The headline on a previous version of this obituary, which also appeared on Page B10 March 12, implied that the horn not sounding immediately was a “slip” by Tadashi Tadani. Also, the first names of Tadani’s brother Makoto Tadani and sister Satsuki Inouye were misspelled.
