My wife showed me a story about basketball in our local paper and asked “Why do they call assists ‘dimes’?” I (not being a basketball fan) was unfamiliar with the term, and so is the slangmeister Jonathon Green; the OED, however, in its dime entry (revised just this year), has:
6. Sport (chiefly North American). An especially precise or well-timed pass, esp. one resulting in or leading to a scoring opportunity. Cf. Phrases P.5b.
2008 He threw a dime to me, and I just tried to make it happen.
Calgary (Alberta) Herald 2 November f7/22015 The 5-foot-8..guard..dished a perfect dime to teammate Brittny Hoover standing under the basket.
Great Falls (Montana) Tribune 20 February s1/22023 Rose put in an absolute dime and I got on the end of it. I’m happy for the goal.
Boston Globe 27 July c8/1
Phrases P.5 [to drop a dime] b:
Sport (chiefly North American). Originally in Basketball: to make a precise or well-timed pass to a teammate for a shot at the basket. Later also in other sports: to throw an especially accurate or precise pass, esp. one resulting in or leading to a scoring opportunity.
1988 She can score in a variety of ways… What she is doing now is what the kids call dropping dimes—getting assists. She loves assists.
Detroit Free Press 24 October (Sports section) 6d/21991 ‘Dropping dimes’. No-one on the Nebraska basketball team is sure where that phrase came from. But the Huskers, who use it to describe a nice pass for a basket, are saying it a lot this season.
Omaha (Nebraska) World-Herald 5 February 20/12017 Buechele dropped a dime..to freshman running back Toneil Carter.
Daily Texan (Univ. Texas, Austin) 29 September 7/6
And there is a Stack Overflow thread on the topic; the first answer seems sensible:
There isn’t really a verifiable source on this, unfortunately, without perhaps doing a ton of research of old television announcers. I’ve never seen that.
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”. That was due to the cost of a pay phone call back then – $0.10 – which would be used to call the police. That apparently transitioned to assists in basketball. Wiktionary shows these meanings, for example, and all sorts of online discussions support this – but nothing meaningful as proof unfortunately.
It’s also possible that it simply was directly related to the cost of a phone call, of course. 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. You feed them, same as you feed a pay phone dimes. There are a lot of small similarities that might either have been the initial connection, or reinforced it once it was made by someone.
I knew that the older form was “drop a dime,” and so I assumed that it (like the sense related to providing information to the police) originated with something to do with payphones. However, I could not figure the metaphor out any more specifically than that.
In mystery novels and movies of the early and middle twentieth century, “drop a dime” often meant to rat someone out, to denounce them to the police. The term became more generalizd, meaning to use a (pay) telephone. How and when it migrated to basketball assists is a mystery to me, but I’ve heard it used to mean ‘make a precise pass’ in women’s college basketball since I began following that sport about twenty-five years ago.
@cuchuflete: You have the order somewhat confused. “Drop a dime” referred to phone calls first, then informing to the police, then basketball passes.
@Brett: Thanks. Yes, that makes sense.
You can see the sense development at the first (Green) link; scroll down to “drop a dime.”
I hate to accuse Green of an error, but this seems wrong:
“ Note basketball jargon drop a dime, to shoot a three-point basket] (US)”
There are quite a few slang terms for the three point shot, but drop a dime is not one I’ve ever heard.
“ Three-point shot : A field goal attempt from behind a designated line. In international basketball, the line sits 22.1 feet from the basket at its furthest point. When made, the shot counts for three points. Slang terms include: long-range shot, triple, trey.”
Source: https://www.nbcolympics.com/news/basketball-101-olympic-terminology-and-glossary#:~:text=Three%2Dpoint%20shot%20:%20A%20field,range%20shot%2C%20triple%2C%20trey.
Also- From the arc, behind the arc, long distance, etc.
I only knew “drop a dime on” in the “rat someone out” sense (such is the selectivity of my reading.) The meaning was clear from context; the origin never occurred to me. Makes complete sense.
I hate to accuse Green of an error, but this seems wrong
Wow, thanks for catching that — I completely missed it, because he didn’t include it in the list of subsenses. And yeah, he seems to have misunderstood it. (Probably a cricket fan…)