Everything on a basketball court is perfectly calibrated from game-to-game. Unlike baseball, where parks vary in size, basketball courts are one uniform size. The rims are 10 feet high and perfectly level, and the distance from one to the other is the same on every single court where NBA games are played.
Well, kind of. Midway through the first quarter Friday night’s game between the Philadelphia 76ers and Dallas Mavericks that tipped off at god damn 10:15 p.m. EST, Luka Doncic hit a three and started flailing his arms around like something was wrong. It turned out Doncic noticed that the rim was tilted, which led to the officials stopping the game so they could fix this.
Enter Boban Marjanovic, who you have probably heard is very tall. The Mavericks (and former Sixers!) big man casually walked onto the court, bunny hopped, grabbed the rim, and looked to get that thing level.
Boban Marjanovic, rim repair expert pic.twitter.com/tAhAYooqxE
— CJ Fogler AKA Perc70 #BlackLivesMatter (@cjzero) February 5, 2022
It looked like he did a decent job, but decent is not good enough for a rim during an NBA game. As such, someone had to get a ladder, a tape measure, and a level and sort everything out.
— Philadelphia 76ers (@sixers) February 5, 2022
Did this work? Not really! In the aftermath of all this, the backboard got tilted, so the Mavs cut their losses and just replaced the basket altogether.
They brought out the spare rim pic.twitter.com/oAe2wwJt3a
— Nick Angstadt (@NickVanExit) February 5, 2022
If this does not work, we recommend cutting the court in half and just playing 3-on-3.