NOT CARING ABOUT THE SCORE.

NOT CARING ABOUT THE SCORE. The seventh game of the series between the Chicago Bulls and the Boston Celtics featured something I have never seen in any high school, college or professional sporting event. As reported here and here, the score was wrong for almost all of the game. Mary Jane and I were watching when Ben Gordon made a three point shot early in the first period and was only credited with two points. We noticed it immediately (I may not know the score of a game, but I know the amount of the lead). We watched with increasing discomfort as nothing was said by the announcers. (The articles I linked to refer to a review of the shot, but it seemed clear that it was a different shot). Finally, with less than six minutes left in the game, Doug Collins said that there had been a “technical error” and the Bulls were being given an additional point. Remarkable. And more remarkable for several reasons. There was no controversy about the basket. Gordon was well beyond the three point line. One point mattered. The mistake was early in the game. The series had been close; there had been a total of seven overtimes in six previous games. When the change was made the Celtic lead was reduced to three points. Even more remarkably, nobody on the broadcast noticed—the announcers didn’t notice,and the entire staff for the broadcast didn’t notice. The referees didn’t notice. (I would say that it was a situation like the ones in this post where it was time to brew another cup of coffee, except that Collins said that the Bulls had been trying to get the score corrected). Finally, it is remarkable that journalists are not very excited about the extraordinary occurrence of the score being wrong. I have seen no report on what happened. What was the “technical error”? Why did it take so long to correct? And how did it finally get corrected? I qualified what I said in the first sentence that I had never seen anything like this “in any high school, college or professional sporting event.” I have seen this kind of scoring in T-ball games.

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