The officiating crew seemed to be sound asleep at the wheel in Thursday’s Oklahoma City Thunder-Indiana Pacers game.
To begin the fourth quarter of the contest, the Thunder inbounded the ball and started dribbling up the floor. But OKC guard Ajay Mitchell, apparently at the urging of his bench, suddenly made a U-turn and drove towards the other basket to try to poach a layup. The referees ultimately blew the play dead before he could do so though.
It turns out that the refs had directed OKC to inbound from the wrong end of the floor to start off the quarter. As a result, they called Mitchell and the Thunder back to the other side of the court to effectively start the fourth quarter all over again.
Here is the bizarre video.
Refs gave Thunder the ball on the wrong side of the floor to start 4Q pic.twitter.com/LKDOjMpVK1
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) December 27, 2024
NBA teams switch sides of the floor once in between halves, not in between quarters. It was a close game at the time too with the Pacers leading 84-83 to begin the fourth, so the referees were really flirting with disaster there.
The Thunder would go on to win the game 120-114 thanks to 45 points from their star guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander. But referee foul-ups are becoming more and more of a dominant storyline in the NBA recently (with another official admitting in a viral video a few days ago that “I f–ked up”).
