Summer League Game Sets Basketball Back 30 Years

LAS VEGAS--An NBA Summer League game between the Boston Celtics and San Antonio Spurs on Monday featured 74 personal fouls, 35 turnovers, and dozens of air balls in a horrifying spectacle that set the game of basketball back about 30 years. Fans in attendance sat in stunned silence as the teams stumbled their way through the sordid affair, which seemed to last six hours.

“Wow. That was…interesting,” said fan Bob Kilgore, 35. “That was…I don’t even know how to describe that. I actually saw a player hit the 24- second clock with a jump shot – directly, not off the backboard. I don’t think I saw two straight possessions that resulted in buckets. It was just ‘Clang! Clang! Clang! Clang!’ all day long. Was that rim made of aluminum? It sounded like someone taking a hammer to the inside of a trash barrel. The only thing this 'game' had in common with a real NBA game was that the players were wearing shorts and almost nobody was watching it.”

Another fan who witnessed the tragedy, Daniel Moseman, called it “an abortion.”

“That was an abortion,” said Moseman, 28. “It tarnished the game of basketball. At one point this point guard for San Antonio, whose name escapes me, drove into the lane, threw up a lay-up, hit the bottom of the rim, caught the carom, and then hurled it behind him into the stands. Then security had to run into the stands and get the ball because it was the only one they had, but the fan wouldn’t give it up, so they ended up tasering the guy, and then everybody cheered because that was like the most exciting moment of the whole game.”

Late in the third quarter, two unidentified players collided at mid court and fell down, and a third player picked up the ball and launched a three point shot that clanged off the front off the rim and dropped lifelessly to the floor.

Both teams, along with the referees, stood silently and wondered what to do next.

“What a moment that was,” said Moseman. “Everybody was just standing around waiting for someone else to do something. So I started screaming ‘Get the ball!’ and nobody moved. So I ran all the way down to the front row, tapped the official on the back and explained to him that someone needed to pick up the ball and do something with it. He ran the ball over to some random player, who grabbed it, hurled up a half court shot, which went in, right as the buzzer was sounding to end the third quarter. The kid got mobbed by his teammates. Next thing you know he’ll be all over Sportscenter. Talk about bitter irony.”

The entire fourth quarter went by without a bucket, causing the game, which was tied, to go into a two minute overtime period, which was decided by a free throw on a technical foul resulting from the Spurs utilizing two basketballs at the same time in an attempt to trick the Celtics defenders.

Only a heads-up call by the official prevented the scheme from working.

“With the game winding down the Spurs tried a little trickery, but it backfired on them,” said referee Jed Costas. “See, people think because this is the Summer League they can fool us with anything, but I think we proved them wrong today. Actually I shouldn’t say they were trying to ‘fool’ us exactly, because both Spurs players were absolutely convinced it was legal to use two balls in the final seconds of overtime games. Hopefully this will be a learning experience for them.”

Armond Hill, coach of the Celtics Summer League squad, admitted that it was a “painful” game, but explained that the games were meant to be educational, not pretty.

“It’s just a chance for some of the young kids to get their feet wet,” said Hill. “For some, it’s their only chance to show us the few skills that they have and the many, many skills that they don’t have. Of course it’s kind of ugly and it’s about ten thousand notches below the NBDL, but that’s okay. It’s not supposed to be good basketball. If you want good basketball, wait until the NBA season starts. Actually, wait until the Euroleague season starts.”

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