Raptors Blame ESPN for Broken Shot Clock: "They're not the Worldwide Leader in electricians" [UPDATE]
During the final 5:57 of Nets-Raptors on Saturday, the shot clock wasn’t working. In lieu of the digital display in the arena, Toronto’s public address announcer served in its place, disclosing when it reset and reached 10 seconds left, and counting down from 5 seconds left.
Per USA Today’s Jeff Zillgitt, an anonymous source says that ESPN was to blame for the malfunction in the Air Canada Centre. They were having some sort of issue with their electricity, and tried to rectify it by plugging into the shot clocks’ power source, causing an overload.
“Let’s just put it this way,” a Raptors official joked, via the Canadian Press. “They’re not the worldwide leader in electricians.”
Update: The Raptors now say that the malfunction was their fault because they didn’t have backup infrastructure in the case of a failure.
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[Photo: Tom Szczerbowski, USA Today Sports]