Is This the Silliest Technical Foul in NBA History?

The Los Angeles Lakers had yet another frustrating defeat on Saturday, dropping a tight 125-121 contest to the Boston Celtics in overtime.

The Lakers were kind of ticked off that the game even went to overtime in the first place. They felt LeBron James got fouled on a drive in the final seconds.

(Plot twist: He did.)

LeBron had a visceral response to the blatant non-call, though I’m more interested in noted NBA troll Patrick Beverley. His reaction is pretty delightful.

Yes, Patrick Beverly found a camera from one of the baseline photographers that offered photographic evidence of LeBron getting fouled.

I love that after he’s gotten the technical, he turns back around and points at it. Like “ALL THE EVIDENCE YOU NEED IS RIGHT HERE!”

When I was in college, I worked for our intramural department, and I also worked for our campus TV station.

The two of those jobs joined forces one day when I was doing a story about flag football for the TV station. So, I headed out to the field to shoot some action.

One team ran the ol’ hook and lateral—visual example of this type of play here—and as the receiver was lateralling the ball to his teammate, an opponent pulled the flag of the first receiver.

The official on the field called the play dead.

IMMEDIATELY, both sides looked at me, with my camera pointed right at the play.

I rewound the tape and showed that the literal did, in fact, happen successfully before a flag was pulled. But sometimes, a ref will miss a call. It happens.

Thankfully, cooler heads prevailed in that case, but it was my first thought when Beverley pulled out a fancy DSLR.

This is among the most absurd reasons to get a technical foul. But is it THE dumbest?

Here are three other pretty good contenders.

This issue is presented by Craig Leener.

Lawrence Tuckerman is a fan of probabilities — well, any numbers and math, really. It’s an interest that goes hand-in-hand with his autism. It’s also how he met his best friend Zeke, who is off fulfilling his dream of playing basketball at the University of Kansas. Now Lawrence expects his life in Los Angeles to become even less social and more routine — just the way he likes it. He plans to finish high school as he pursues his own far-off dream of manning Earth’s first mission to Mars…

Then the improbable happens: Lawrence is recruited for a top-secret mission of cosmic proportions! The whole operation relies on him realizing the full potential of his 1-in-6-billion mind—without freaking out. The rocket-science math is a no-brainer, but is he made of the right stuff to manage the communication and cooperation of a team effort… without his best friend?

Grab There’s No Basketball on Mars at craigleener.com.