NBA
The Clippers vs. Pistons excitement occurs every 6,437 games
The Clippers coming back from -14 in 3 minutes and beating the Pistons in overtime is something that doesn’t happen often in the NBA. In fact, this was only the third time in the last 25 years.
The Clippers had nothing to lose and everything to gain against the Pistons. They were trailing -14 (126-112) in the finals with about 3.5 minutes to go, eliminating the starters. Almost 200 seconds later the score was 128-128 and the game went into overtime where they won 142-131!
In an environment that looked straight out of a movie, the Clippers’ secondary pulled off an unlikely turn before Paul George (32 points) cleaned up in overtime. Moses Brown and Amir Coffey only played 3 minutes and 8 seconds. It was the last 3 minutes and 8 seconds of regulation time. They both had +12 in the +/- system! Terrance Mann was +28 in 21 minutes of action, Nikola Batum was +23 in 31 minutes of action and Luke Kennard was +9 in 32 minutes of action. The star of the team (Paul George) was -7! And yet the Clippers won this match. And they made history.
According to the NBA, there have been 12,875 games since 1997 in which a team was 14 points behind with three minutes left. Only twice (!) was there a reversal. This was the third. Overall, the record up to this game in such cases was 2-12,873, which means that such a surprise happened once every 6,436.5 games (6,437 with rounding)!
Instead of an epilogue. Watch the excitement of the clippers at the end of the regulation:
Source: sport 24
I’m a sports enthusiast and journalist who has worked in the news industry for over 8 years. I currently work as an author at Sportish and my work focuses mainly on sports news.