Embarrassing delays mar end of Lakers-Warriors

The officials went to the replay monitor immediately, looking at a three-pointer from LeBron James from seconds earlier. After a lengthy review, the officials ruled James had his heel out-of-bounds, negating the three points.

But that wasn't all. After a stoppage of nearly five minutes, the referees announced that Ham's challenge was successful. They decided that Jaxson Hayes and Andrew Wiggins had touched the rebound simultaneously, and the result would be a jump ball.

Ominously, announcer Mike Breen mentioned that James hadn't yet hit his season-high in points, but there was "plenty of time" left in the game. His words proved prophetic, as Draymond Green corralled the tap, and threw it off Austin Reaves as he was falling out of bounds.

Three seconds went off the clock. So much more time elapsed in real life.

Reaves bumped into Green. Green's foot appeared to hit the line before he threw the ball off Reaves. Ham challenged again. Referee jersey patch sponsor, Emirates Airlines, got a tremendous amount of screen time. ESPN's Doris Burke and J.J. Redick tied to kill time as the review dragged on and on, while Breen asked if they could simply make a decision "Not properly, but quickly."

Eleven minutes since the first challenge, the officials ruled Green was out-of-bounds and it was Lakers ball. Ham had won two challenges in three seconds of game action. In that time, the Lakers had lost three points.

The game clock ran for five seconds, but then officials realized that the shot clock at the Crypto.com Arena hadn't started. They reset, the Lakers took the ball out again, and the shot clock again didn't start.

James channeled Roger Murtaugh in "Lethal Weapon" and declared he was "too old for this [business]."

Eventually, everyone determined that the shot clock was unfixable, which led to the unprecedented event of Lakers public address announcer Lawrence Tanter counting down the shot clock seconds by stopwatch, though he was admittedly the smoothest and most melodious shot clock in NBA history. 

Redick said, "I'd take any voice at this point."

Steph Curry was doing wind sprints on the court. Bad Bunny, Kim Kardashian and Ben Affleck were visibly yawning in courtside seats. After the previous 15 seconds of game action took over 20 minutes, Los Angeles finally inbounded the ball. And Steph Curry stole the ball from James, clearly playing well past his bedtime, and the game was mercifully over.

While the NBA admirably wants to make sure all its calls are correct, Saturday night was a classic example of the problems of video reviews. At a certain point, everyone simply wants the officials to make a call, any call. The impossible pursuit of truth made the NBA look incompetent just ahead of the playoffs, when they should be shining brightest.

The Warriors eventually won, 128-121, leapfrogging the Lakers for ninth place in the Western Conference. But fans will only remember that a dramatic game between two star-studded teams turned into an interminable slog.