Home / JJ Clips / Own basket twice
This never happens. Until it does. Twice.
A deliberate layup into your own basket is about as rare as basketball gets. Today it happened in two women’s college games.
47 seconds. Also on YouTube ↗. The voice is a masked voice, on purpose. Clips: @carterl0we and @turningpointjpn on X, used for commentary.
Game 1: nothing special
Women’s college basketball, first quarter, 16-12. Nothing special, just a normal possession. Then she gets the ball, runs the floor and lays it in. Clean. Wrong basket.
Not a tip-in in a scramble. A wrong-way layup. 16-12 becomes 18-12, for the other team.
Game 2: all they had to do was nothing
Same day, different game. Up by one, 61-60, 21 seconds to go. All they have to do is nothing.
And there it is. 61-62.
How rare is this?
Forget tip-ins in a scramble or a rebound that bounces the wrong way. This is a player who runs the floor, sure it’s the other team’s basket, and lays it in clean.
By my rough estimate, that happens about once in 20,000 to 30,000 games. Watch one game every day of your life and you’d wait 55 to 80 years to see it live once.
If a bookie offered it as a bet, the fair odds would be 20,000. You’d get 500.
And then it happened twice on the same day.
Two in one day? Even I can’t estimate that.
Every bet can lose
Picture the bet. Up by one, 21 seconds left, and you have the ball. It’s a good spot, not a done deal. The other team has to foul, you have to make your free throws, and they still get a last shot. But the odds are with you.
One second later, they were behind. Not to a missed free throw or a buzzer-beater. To her own layup.
They did win in the end, with a real basket in the last second. So the bet survived, but look at what saved it: a last-second shot, not the good spot. For 20 seconds that good bet was a losing bet, and luck turned it back.
That’s the point I keep making: every bet can lose, no matter how good it is. An injury. A disqualifying foul. Or the more common, stupid one: a player gets an unsportsmanlike foul, argues with the ref, gets a technical and is thrown out on the spot. A late three, a referee, a game somebody manipulated (some people call it fixed), a bookie cancelling your winner or taking back your cash-out. A wrong-way layup is just the most extreme way it happens. It’s the 1 in 20,000 that should never touch you. Today it touched two games.
No sure thing
If a good bet can lose like this, there is no sure thing. People who tell you otherwise are selling something. “Zero chance you can lose”: the hurdles that post leaves out →
Thinking about betting? Start here, and then don’t even start.
Don’t even start.
If betting is already affecting you, talk to someone. Free and confidential help: BeGambleAware.