The Weekside: Russell Westbrook’s Last Stand

Game of Postpones

The injury-ravaged Portland Trail Blazers were forced to make some extra cross-country flights last week to make up a game with the Brooklyn Nets. Their game was originally scheduled for January 26 but, along with a New York Knicks/Minnesota Timeberwolves game in Manhattan the same evening, it was postponed due to an incoming blizzard.

While weather-related cancellations do happen from time to time, the Blazers faced the rare inconvenience of having a round-trip, coast-to-coast flight to New York squeezed in between two home games in Portland. This would normally be avoided. Usually, Western Conference team play several games on an East Coast road trip before flying home and vice versa.

This is far from the oddest schedule quirk in recent years, however.

A 2010 Magic/Heat game was cancelled after the floor was deemed to slippery to play on; a 2013 Spurs/Timberwolves game that was supposed to occur in Mexico City never happened when the arena became filled with smoke after a “generator malfunction”; and the final 52 seconds of 2008 Heat/Hawks game, which seemingly began and ended without interruption, was later ordered to be replayed.

Due to what David Stern called “grossly negligent” record keeping by the home team, the NBA ruled that the two squads had to re-do that final minute the next time they faced off in a pseudo-double-header.

In this strange occurrence, Shaquille O’Neal was erroneously given a sixth foul and ejected by Atlanta’s scorekeepers before Miami lost. So due to what David Stern called “grossly negligent” record keeping by the home team, the NBA ruled that the two squads had to re-do that final minute the next time they faced off in a pseudo-double-header. Stranger still, the Heat had traded away Shaq since the original game concluded, so Miami still played those 52 seconds without the Hall-of-Fame center. And they still lost. In fact, neither team even scored in the replay, making it a colossal waste of everyone’s time — and this in a league that now routinely conducts five-minute reviews of clear-path fouls.

The most-harrowing recent schedule oddity, though, was due to the Boston Marathon bombing on April 16, 2013.

The Celtics were scheduled to host the Pacers, but the game was naturally cancelled after the horror. And since it was so late in the season and the outcome of the contest wouldn’t have affected playoff seeding, the game was never re-scheduled. So both Boston and Indiana only played 81 games that season. It remains the only time any team has played less than 82 games since the league went to an 82-game schedule.

Next: Words With Friends