The NBA has had its share of clock controversies in the past, but this is a new one.
The Los Angeles Lakers and Memphis Grizzlies played an extra 66 seconds on Friday night because of a clock reset error. You can see it in the video below: After a 24-second violation by the Grizzlies, the teams are walking back to the other end of the court, and the game clock jumps from 1:14 to 2:20 for no reason. Nobody notices. Not the players, not the officials, not the scorer’s table or game statisticians, nobody that could change things. NBA spokesman Tim Frank admitted the error but said that nothing could be done about it at this point.
here is the play where it happened. you can see the clock change in the bottom right hand corner. https://t.co/TL342uTehb pic.twitter.com/w2RKcGTRRi
— Darius Soriano (@forumbluegold) April 14, 2024
This mattered in a game that had playoff-seeding implications for the Lakers.
In the next 1:06 of the game (the repeated 1:06), the score was 2-2. However, in the final 1:06 of the quarter (the extra time played), the Lakers outscored the Grizzlies by two (4-2), so rather than ending the quarter down a point the Lakers ended the quarter up one. The Lakers went on to win the game by three, 123-120, and while we don’t know how the ending and result would have played out, it would have been different than the one we got.
The win, combined with the Kings’ and Warriors’ losses, moved the Lakers up to the No. 8 seed in the West heading into the final day of play.
