The Bulls & Blazers Put in a Strong Bid For The Worst Sequence of Possessions in NBA History

The 34-42 Chicago Bulls hosted the Portland Trail Blazers this evening. Being merely 8 games below .500, the Bulls have already clinched the 10-seed with ease, and are rounding into playoff form. The Trail Blazers (34-43) came into the night still clinging to life in the West, hoping to sneak into the super normally formatted NBA Playoffs.

There's nothing I love more than a terrible sequence of possessions in a basketball game. Well, that's probably exaggerating a bit. But I get a kick out of them. You can hear the Benny Hill music playing in your mind. It's like a snowball effect. It's like when a couple players do something terrible, everything speeds up, players lose all inhibitions, and things just get worse and worse and worse until there's finally a stoppage in play. And in this case, the hilarious basketball even managed to survive thought an out of bounds turnover.

No less than three occurrences in that 1 minute span would have been the worst play of the night in a majority of NBA basketball games. It looked like two shots somehow managed to hit the underside of the backboard. And there's something beautiful about a missed dunk that hits the backside of the rim so square, at such a high rate of slam. When it launches so far backwards that it nearly grazes the scoreboard. Sometimes (not in this case) it almost makes a dunk cooler. It really highlights the authority of dunk. I'll never forget this one from Victor Oladipo when he was at Indiana.

I guess in hindsight it would be been "cooler" if Oladipo had actually dunked that dunk. But it's oddly satisfying to watch. And in tonight's case, Kevin Huerter's missed dunk was only exacerbated by the Blazers following it up shortly after with a breathtaking missed alley-oop.

The air-oop was the real cherry on top. That what puts it up there with the WOAT's. I always joke in March during the NCAA Tournament about how we get so accustomed to watching college basketball players bang their heads against the wall every possession, and essentially get into bar fights just to go 1-2 from the free throw line. Then you flip back to an NBA game and 7-footers are swishing 3-pointers from the logo. And teams are doing things like this.

But the NBA isn't perfect either. They are fully capable of stringing together multiple YMCA men's league caliber possessions as well. It's rare. But it still happens. From a playoff team, no less. It's always a treat to watch. Congrats on making the postseason Chicago Bulls. The championship DVD starts here.

While I'm on the topic, here are some more bad NBA basketball sequences.