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Watch: Ben Affleck suffers through Lakers-Warriors’ brutal 19-minute clock delay
A shot-clock malfunction led to an extended delay in the final minutes of the Lakers-Warriors game.
Hollywood star, Massachusetts native, and proven meme cultivator Ben Affleck managed to make the rounds on the interwebs once again this weekend.
And no, a new DunKings ad didn’t drop.
Instead, Affleck, his son, Samuel, and wife, Jennifer Lopez, were three of the 20,000 patrons within Los Angeles’ Crypto.com Arena waiting for the merciful end of Saturday’s primetime game between the Lakers and Warriors.
The closing minutes of basketball can sometimes drag when teams utilize time-outs, intentional fouls, and other strategies to try and either extend leads or claw back from deficits.
But Saturday’s game in L.A. was an unprecedented slog thanks to a shot-clock malfunction at the Lakers’ home arena.
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With just under two minutes left to play in the West-Coast showdown, it took over 19 minutes of real time to play 15 seconds of game time — with those clock issues thwarting several attempts to play out those final minutes of action.
“I’ve never seen anything like this in 30+ years in the NBA,” ABC play-by-play man Mike Breen said. “And I’ll bet Steph Curry and LeBron James haven’t either, in all their times together.”
While league officials, the referees on the hardwood, and the staff at Crypto.com Arena tried to get the show on the road, cameras on the broadcast caught several celebrities showing their evident frustration at the agonizing delay.
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Affleck was caught staring up at the ceiling with the game stuck at a standstill — a feeling many of us have felt counting down time in the dentist’s waiting room or while stuck bumper-to-bumper on 93 South.
ABC’s television cameras captured other celebrities biding time as the delay carried on, including tennis star Novak Djokovic, Kim Kardashian, and Bad Bunny.
Eventually, the game resumed and the Warriors went on to beat the Lakers, 128-121.
Perhaps Affleck will make the trek back to Boston for courtside seats during the Celtics’ promising run toward Banner 18. The Celtics might have a knack for raining 3-pointers and contesting shots during timeouts, but a 19-minute clock delay? No such thing at TD Garden …at least not yet.
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