Everyone knows that 20 points is the official cutoff point for where highlights become really cool. 20 may be an arbitrary number caused by our base-10 counting system, but that’s just how it is. Objectively, 19 is only one worse than 20. Our primitive little monkey brains, though, interpret it as a full 10 worse.
Then why I am compiling this video, you ask? Because I was misled. The NBA misled me. Adam Silver himself is complicit in the deception. The box score said, and likely still does say, that Timmy had 21 points. Remember, 21 is enough points for a high-quality highlight package, while 19 is not.
The play-by-play lies. A jumper supposedly canned by Hardaway was in reality canned by one Malcolm Delaney, who was wearing a headband. I understand the NBA’s reasoning, even if I don’t agree with it; buckets for unknown rookies must sometimes be sacrificed in the name of nepotism. But couldn’t they have made it less obvious? I mean, Delaney was wearing a headband. It’s hard to confuse the two players when one of their heads has a white strip encircling it.
This is not the first time this has happened, nor will it be the last. The fact remains, though, that these highlights are forever going to suck, because they do not depict a player scoring 20 or more points.