- Seth, today I wanna tell you about a somewhat minor
rules violation that cascades into such a cluster
that it results in one player scoring
for two basketball teams in the same game.
- On purpose?
- No, not on purpose.
- By accident?
- Yeah, kind of by accident.
- Did he get traded in the middle of the game?
That's not--
- Technically yes. - how that works.
- He did.
But the game didn't happen on the same day.
That's the clue.
- Okay.
- So let's go into it.
It's November 8th, 1978.
The New Jersey Nets are playing the 76ers.
Bernard King is already sitting on one technical foul,
and he gets his second tech.
So he is ejected from the game.
On the way out, he kicks a chair in the tunnel,
and the referee gives him a third technical.
- Okay, which you can't do.
- Which you cannot do.
But it stands for whatever reason,
and he goes into the tunnel
and they do the free throw shot or whatever.
- Yeah.
- And the coach, Kevin Loughery, of course gets upset
and starts chewing out the official, saying,
"You can't give my guy a third technical."
And he is already sitting on one technical himself,
so Kevin Loughery gets an additional two techs
from this referee who's just handing out
rogue third technicals.
He's like the Oprah - [Seth] Yeah!
- [Ryan] of technical fouls.
- [Seth] Except people who already get cars,
get additional cars
- [Ryan] Right, you have a third car and you have a third
- [Seth] I don't have room in my garage for all these
- [Ryan] I don't need another car.
- [Seth] Like he's got a T-Shirt cannon for the techs BLAT
Fan, you get a technical!
Scorekeeper, you get a technical!
Other Ref, BLAT, you get one too!
Like, you can't do this man.
- Yeah, one is for T-Shirts, and then
the other one is just for T’s.
- Yeah, perfect. A T cannon.
- A T cannon.
He also gets ejected. The game continues.
The Nets lose in a four point deficit in double overtime.
So it's really close, and
- Those technicals mattered.
- They mattered. - Quite a bit.
- Right?
- Okay, I see where this is going, yeah.
- Yes.
So the Nets protest the game, which requires
a fifteen hundred dollar deposit,
I found out researching this.
- Sure. Do you get it back?
- I don't know. All I know is you have to come up with
fifteen hundred dollars to go to the commissioner
and say you wanna protest the game.
- Which is such a piddling amount of money
that does nothing for anyone.
- I don't know where the fifteen hundred dollars goes.
It's not like you're paying people to come,
it costs far more than that to run a basketball
a professional basketball --
- There's one employee in the NBA office that
that's the entire way that make money.
- So the Nets successfully protest.
The commissioner at the time, Larry O'Brien,
says "Yes. We will fix this. We will replay the game
at another date, starting at the time when the first
third technical happened.” Does that make sense?
- Yeah.
- We’re gonna start in the middle of the third quarter
and we're gonna replay the rest of the game from there.
So Bernard King is still out of the game
- Right.
- Because he got this second technical.
Kevin Loughery's additional technicals are eliminated
so he gets to come back and coach them.
- Right, cause he was responding to --
- Precisely. - an injustice that he was…
He was responding within a reality that technically
does not and should not exist.
- [Ryan] Right. That's exactly what's happening here.
The NBA is nullifying the reality of this game
because of this official's errant proclivity
for extra technical fouls.
But this replay of the game does not happen until March
- Okay.
and the original game happens in November.
In the intervening months, the two teams
the Nets and the 76ers, conduct a two for two trade
of players on their teams. - [Seth] Of course.
- One of which, is Eric Money, who is a guard with
a phenomenal last name for the Nets.
He gets traded to the 76ers and is activated somewhere
in the 135 days between these two games.
- Right.
So by the time we get to the replay in March,
he is playing for the opposite team, and becomes
the only player in NBA history to be listed --
Your face is the perfect response to this story.
Take me through what's going through your head right now.
- Okay, so he played for both teams. Which way did he go?
He went from the Nets to the --
- [Ryan] He went from the Nets to the sixers.
- And so, they let him play for his new team
in the new reality? Or they traded him back for
the purposes of this game?
- Great question. They let him play for the new team
in the same game. - Okay, that's the only
That's the only right way to do that.
- Take me through your other option.
- Okay, because the other option, which is justifiable
but practically impossible, is you’re like, alright,
well, technically in this reality that we're trying to
recreate, you're on your old team.
So you gotta go join your old teammates,
go to the other locker room, put your jersey back on.
You know, you've picked up your life, taken your
wife and kids and moved them to Philadelphia,
but just for now, you've gotta pretend like
it's the old days and by the way, don't try to
lose the game even though you're on a different team now.
That's the big problem there. - Right.
Unless he, too, is operating in the old reality
and is eliminating from his head that he is
now a Sixer and is back in Nets mode.
- Yeah, that would require some sort of
like brainwashing, or like a Clockwork Orange type thing,
where they're like, "these are your real memories...
none of this actually happened...
you spent the two months as a New Jersey Net."
- It kind of feels like a weird dream scenario.
- Man, I could never be a commissioner of a sports league
because if I were Larry O'Brien, when you get
that protest from the Nets, you're just like,
"No. You know what? No. I, you have a great case
but no, it's too hard, life's unfair. Goodbye." Over.
- [Ryan] Fun fact: the referee who gave the errant
technical fouls was Richie Powers, who also officiated
the 1976 finals between the Celtics and the Suns,
which we also have an episode about.
Or, watch this other video if you've
had enough Richie Powers.