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USATSI

With two minutes and 31 seconds remaining in Tuesday's Los Angeles Lakers victory over the Houston Rockets, Kent Bazemore stole the basketball and was fouled by Kevin Porter Jr. Bazemore proceeded to sink both of his free throws to push the Lakers lead up to 116-106. So far, this all sounds like standard NBA fare. Here's where things get wonky. 

Bazemore's free throws came because the officials believed the Lakers were in the bonus. However, at the next stoppage, they realized that Porter's foul was Houston's fourth of the quarter, not its fifth. They huddled up and made what was surely the most controversial officiating decision of the season thus far. With 1:36 remaining in the game, after Houston had picked up five quick points, the officials decided to revoke the two points Bazemore earned at the line. Suddenly, what was once a 10-point lead had been cut to three in only 55 seconds of game time.

Here's the problem with taking those points off the board: The Lakers may not have earned those free throw attempts, but they did earn possession. Had the officials known how many fouls Houston had actually accumulated at the time, the Lakers would have had a side out of bounds opportunity. By taking the two points off the board, though, the Lakers were deprived of that possession. It's not as though the officials could force the two teams to replay the past 55 seconds. The Lakers lost two points without being given a chance to regain them. 

"They took the two points away," Anthony Davis explained to reporters after the game. "But what me, Bron [LeBron James] and coach were explaining to the refs was we lost a possession. We didn't take the ball out or anything. We shot free throws -- take the points away, and now we just lose the possession. Which could have cost the game."

It very nearly did cost the Lakers the game. They ultimately won by only two points, 119-117, and needed Porter to miss a game-winning 3-point attempt in the final seconds to secure the victory. The Lakers were, in essence, punished for Houston committing a foul.

So what caused the mistake? According to ESPN's Dave McMenamin, the scoreboard operator gave Houston its fourth foul so quickly that the officials assumed that the Rockets had four fouls before accounting for Porter's foul on Bazemore, which they believed brought Houston to five. 

The league is fortunate that this mistake didn't cost the Lakers the game. A blunder of this magnitude swinging the outcome of a game would have been disastrous, but that it happened so early in the season and without real repercussions could prove to be a blessing for the league. While another incident like this is unlikely, the league can learn from this experience and attempt to craft new protocols that wouldn't be so punitive to the innocent party in the future.