On Wednesday night, the Bulls and Wizards faced off in a tank off of epic proportions. It’s April and neither team has a shot at the playoffs at this point. Bradley Beal’s minutes have been reduced in order to help him stay fresh, avoid injury, and of course lose games for the Wizards. Many of the Bulls key pieces have been shut down for the season. Some due to injuries. Others due to rest. Either way, neither team is all that interested in winning games right now.
However, rarely does that tanking impact the actual effort on the court. The players want to win. They don’t care about tanking, the draft, or anything like that. They would never try to lose a game on purpose. Or so we thought. If there’s one thing about basketball it’s that substitutions are fairly simple. They can only occur on dead balls. Referees stop all play until both teams are set and get the players they want on the floor at least on the floor.
As a result, it’s rare to have issues of too many players on the court or not enough. However, that happened to the Bulls as Cristiano Felicio somehow didn’t know that he was supposed to be on the court and had to let his Bulls teammates play a key late possession 4-on-5.
Felicio, wyd? pic.twitter.com/pZNyViDI2d
— Bleacher Report (@BleacherReport) April 4, 2019
This is phenomenal. Look at Felicio’s face. That is the face of a man yelling “OH CRAP” as he sprints towards the play because he realizes that he’s made a horrible horrible mistake. That is the face of a man that has no idea how he’s ended up in this situation. That is the face of a player that wants to be anywhere else than here right now.
It’s rare to see a play so funny that it causes you to break out into hysterics, but this one managed to do it. Despite the misstep, the Bulls still managed to win, so they’ll be able to laugh about it in the end. However, it might not even be the funniest thing that happened on Wednesday night as Gregg Popovich managed to get himself tossed from a game less than two minutes in.
