The Los Angeles Lakers suffered a costly loss to the Golden State Warriors on Saturday night, putting them in a tie for ninth and 10th place in the Western Conference with only a handful of games to go.
The loss did not come without some controversy as there were a number of stoppages late in the game. With around two minutes to play, LeBron James drilled a 3-pointer from the corner to bring the Lakers within four. After Anthony Davis went down with an injury, the Lakers were doing there best to chip away at the Warriors’ lead and seemed to finally be gaining some momentum.
From there though, the referees botched back-to-back calls, forcing Lakers head coach Darvin Ham to use challenges, both of which were successful.
During that time, they also went back and looked at the James 3-pointer and determined that his foot was on the out-of-bounds line, taking three points away from the Lakers. The shot clock began malfunctioning from there, causing almost 20 minutes of delays combined with the reviews. The Lakers were never able to get the momentum back and would go on to suffer the loss.
Additionally, earlier in the fourth quarter during a Warriors possession, the shot clock reset when it shouldn’t have. So instead of the Lakers getting a stop by defending well for 24 seconds, the Warriors got extra time and wound up scoring.
In a pool report after the game, Crew Chief David Guthrie explained what happened on those plays and why they were able to go back and review James’ foot being out of bounds but not the shot clock resetting:
