The Oklahoma City Thunder had been the hottest team in the NBA with impressive victories over the Denver Nuggets and Boston Celtics. Their star player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has fully entered the MVP discussion and the Thunder are starting to be considered NBA title contenders.
Last night however, the Thunder lost their game against the struggling Atlanta Hawks. The win though, can easily be tracked back to the teams’ respective calendars. While the Hawks hadn’t played since Sunday and were well rested, the Thunder’s flight from Boston arrived in Atlanta at 4:30am, with the game taking place just 15 hours later.
While the game had plenty of great highlights and was pretty fun to watch, in an unusual turn of events, the game was temporarily halted due to a mix-up involving the names of two Oklahoma City players. The referees had difficulty differentiating between Jalen Williams, and Jaylin Williams, leading to a significant delay in the game’s progress.
The confusion began during the second quarter, as Jalen Williams committed a foul. The referees immediately signaled for a foul, but they had trouble identifying which Williams had committed the infraction. They conferred with each other for several minutes, causing a halt in the game’s action.
Zach Zarba, the crew chief for the evening, even consulted with the league office in Secasus. The refs had to rewatch part of the previous quarter to see which Williams had committed one of the fouls.
The referees’ inability to correctly identify the player led to frustration among the players and coaches on both teams. The incident also drew attention from fans and commentators, who expressed amusement and bewilderment at the situation.
Apparently both team scorebooks had him with two fouls but the main scorebook had three fouls. And after about 12 minutes they have determined that he indeed has three fouls.
— Yaya Dubin (@JADubin5) January 4, 2024
Both Jalen and Jaylin Williams now have four fouls. In case you were still counting.
— Yaya Dubin (@JADubin5) January 4, 2024
We have a Jalen/Jaylin Williams confusion
What’s most confusing is how long this is taking
— Andrew Schlecht (@AndrewKSchlecht) January 4, 2024
Lol is all this confusion happening because the NBA refs and/or statisticians can’t tell the difference between Jalen Williams and Jaylin Williams?
— Brandon Rahbar (@BrandonRahbar) January 4, 2024
