Ha! Was it against GS when the opposition only had 4 players who were eligible to play by the end of the game due to injuries and players fouling out? That was one of the most bizarre games I've seen. Can't remember who we were playing though.
It was Golden State (I was at the game). I remember saying to my wife I was interested in how it would play out because I'd been fascinated by the rule as a kid. As I recall, the problem was they didn't have the exact situation the rule requires at first; they had 8 active players but one was actually injured. So the refs made a compromise where the injured player would walk out on the court, play one possession, then "become injured" during the game to be temporarily ineligible without GS forfeiting the game. Then they did the "every foul beyond 6 on said player is also a technical"... it was so fucking bizarre I think it threw us off our groove (we had the game in hand before it all went down).
Yeah, I remember the injured player checking in so that he could foul and go back to the bench. The coach was so pissed at having to make one of his injured guys go out on the floor.
Once I realized what was going on, I felt for him too... I also felt bad for having booed through most of the timeout with the crowd.
Yeah, at the time it was happening it seemed like the refs didn't know what to do and they just wanted GS to have 5 players on the floor and were letting them off the hook for having fouled out. I guess you can't really blame the refs for being rusty on the rule.
