Don’t worry, Washington Wizards fans. Your team actually lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers by only 33 points on Friday.
The NBA announced the day after the game that a scoring error had been made in the Cavaliers-Wizards NBA Cup game. In the second quarter, Wizards rookie Tre Johnson made a pair of free throws, but the scorekeeper incorrectly marked him down as having missed the first attempt. The NBA has corrected the error.
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The new final score: Cavaliers 148, Wizards 115.
The fateful play:
The Cavaliers duly noted the correction.
The extra point also bumped Johnson up to 19 points on the night, continuing a decent start for the sixth overall pick of the 2025 NBA Draft.
This kind of thing isn’t unprecedented. NBA games have a lot of plays and scorekeepers are human, even if their job seems as simple as watching a game of basketball and writing down what happens. Still, it’s quite something for a free throw to just not be counted and have seemingly no one notice it in the moment among the Wizards, officials or broadcast.
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This was also one of the few games in which the margin of victory actually could be important. The NBA Cup uses score differential as a tiebreaker in group play, and it’s quite possible that will come up considering the Cavaliers are now 1-1 with a +22 differential in the East’s Group A. The Toronto Raptors are ahead of them at 2-0 and +23, with the Atlanta Hawks behind them at 1-1 and +8.
The Wizards, meanwhile, sit in last place at 0-1 and -33. But we can clearly say it could have been worse. Washington is also 1-8 for the season overall, tied with the Brooklyn Nets for the worst record in the NBA. The Cavaliers are tied for third in the East at 6-3.
