There are nights when everything goes wrong. You miss the bus, drop your coffee, and your phone battery dies. But then there is the night the Los Angeles Lakers had in Cleveland on February 5, 2014. A night where the team almost ran out of… people.
The Lakers had traveled with just eight available players, a number you wouldn’t call ideal for an NBA team. Along the way, Nick Young got injured, Jordan Farmar left with cramps, and Chris Kaman picked up his sixth foul. The latter figured his job was done, lay down on the empty bench, and watched the rest of the game in a position that a transatlantic flight passenger would envy.
The problem escalated when Robert Sacre also fouled out. If he left the game, the Lakers would be left with four players. That’s when a forgotten NBA rule was invoked: when there is no available substitute, the player remains on the court and the team is assessed a technical foul.
Thus, Sacre achieved something quite rare: he fouled out, but continued to play normally. And because basketball has a sense of humor, the decimated Lakers hit 18 three-pointers, won 119-108, and snapped a seven-game losing streak.
In the end, when you don’t have a bench, you have a rulebook. And when you don’t even have that, you just make yourself comfortable and lie down, like Kaman.
