There are one-in-a-million chances, and then there is what happened to Reggie Jackson on Tuesday night against the Dallas Mavericks.
The L.A. Clippers guard was the victim of a statistical impossibility during the team’s overtime loss to the Mavs. In the extra period, Jackson had back-to-back shot attempts end up as “wedgies,” the unofficial term for when the ball gets caught in between the rim and the backboard. Jackson’s two wedgies happened within roughly a minute of each other.
Rodger Sherman of The Ringer shared just how astronomically unlikely of an occurrence it was for Jackson. Based on there being 47,075 shot attempts in the NBA this season and only nine wedgies (including Jackson’s two), the odds of getting them back-to-back were about 1-in-28 million.
The wedgies ultimately proved costly for the Clippers. Since that situation results in a jump ball at center court between a team’s choice of players on the floor, the Clippers’ small overtime lineup ended up pitting 6-foot-8 Paul George then 6-foot-5 Terance Mann against 7-foot-3 Kristaps Porzingis, who won both taps. The Mavs ended up scoring on both subsequent possessions and won 112-104.
At least Jackson can take solace in the fact that neither of his wedgies were as bad as the one that this fellow NBA player had back in the day.
More must-reads: