The NBA took to its official X account shared a post about the scoring error wherein the Golden State Warriors weren’t credited with a free shot made by De’Anthony Melton with two minutes remaining in the third quarter against the Portland Trail Blazers. The final score of the game was altered from 139-104 to 140-104 in favor of the Warriors when the league disclosed the error on Thursday. The corrected score also meant that Melton was credited with 11 points instead of 10 versus the Trail Blazers.
Although this looks like a preventable counting error, the circumstances surrounding the travel to the queue were peculiar. Kyle Anderson rebounded the miss after Melton missed his second free shot, then made a three-point play the hard way by putting back Brandin Podziemski’s subsequent miss. Since the scoring error occurred during a 21-4/22-4 run, it’s unclear if Melton or any other Warriors player spotted it. It’s easy for a single point to be overlooked amid such a barrage of points.
In the history of the Warriors, it was the fourth season opener when they scored 140 points. They had scored 162 points against Denver in 1990 (an NBA record for an opening game), apart from 144 points against Seattle in 1967 and 140 points against Detroit in 1962.
A worst night possible for the Portland Trail Blazers at the Moda Center
140 was the most points Portland had given up in an opening game in their history as they were at the mercy of the Warriors. In a quadruple-overtime game against Cleveland, the Trail Blazers surrendered 129 points to begin the 1974–75 season. In addition, the 2024-25 season opener was Portland’s worst season-opening loss apart from being Golden State’s largest victory ever. Thursday’s extra point simply made things somewhat worse for the Trail Blazers and slightly better for the Warriors.
Moreover, during the game, De’Anthony Melton made the first free shot in the sequence, but the game’s statisticians noted that he missed the second one. With that, it is important to note that the s coring errors are uncommon in NBA games since teams hire many game-night statisticians and league officials evaluate all game statistics in real-time. This statistical error could have been considered under the misapplication of the official playing rules, rather than wrong judgment by officials. If this had happened in a different game, it could have been a different scenario. Such errors allow teams to decide on the protest. If the Warriors had lost closely, they had every right to request a partial replay of the game.