The Los Angeles Lakers’ win over the Memphis Grizzlies on Friday night was more challenging than it should have been in more ways than one.
Memphis was as shorthanded as they come, missing 13 players due to injury with them going into tank mode to finish out the season. Despite that though, their two-way players and G Leaguers battled until the end and gave the Lakers a scary before LeBron James and Co. closed it out.
In addition to the scare in the actual game, it appears the Lakers and Grizzlies played more minutes than they needed to.
Towards the end of the third quarter, the Grizzlies shot two consecutive air balls to end their possession with 1:14 remaining, but the shot clock was reset mistakenly after the second attempt.
After a third air ball, referee Scott Wall whistled the play dead and signaled to the scorer’s table of the shot clock violation, giving the Lakers possession. However, when the Lakers inbounded the ball, the shot clock was reset to 24 and the game clock was changed from 1:14 to 2:20. None of the referees noticed, neither did either team, and the rest of the game played out from there.
During the 1:06 of extra time, the Lakers and Grizzlies each scored two points with Anthony Davis and Jordan Goodwin each making jump shots. So even though extra time was played, it didn’t seem to really benefit either team.
A day later though, the NBA announced that they made a mistake that no one was able to catch.
“We have confirmed that the game clock was inaccurately set in the third quarter of the Los Angeles Lakers-Memphis Grizzlies game last night at FedEx Forum,” league spokesperson Tim Frank said in a statement. “After a shot clock violation, the clock was set at 2:20 when it should have been at 1:14. The error was not noticed in real time by the teams, the referees, the game clock operator or the stats crew. While unfortunate, the effort was not identified in time to resolve the situation in-game.”
Luckily this didn’t cost the Lakers in a game they needed to win in order to move up the Western Conference standings.
While putting extra wear and tear on guys like James and Davis is not ideal, the important thing is that the Lakers ultimately came out on top with the victory over an extremely shorthanded Grizzlies team.
Rui Hachimura calls out Lakers for ‘messing around’ against Grizzlies
With it being such an important game, most people expected the Lakers to go out and demolish the Grizzlies on Friday, but that wasn’t the case.
The Lakers played one of their worst games of the season and while it did not cost them a win, Rui Hachimura called out his team for ‘messing around’ and turning the ball over at an excessive rate to allow Memphis to stay in the game.
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