The NBA gave a steal back to Anthony Edwards and sent sportsbooks scrambling
While Warriors-Wolves won’t exactly be a Western Conference Finals matchup any time soon, it does feature a lot of talented and fun players. Two of those guys, Minnesota’s Anthony Edwards, a superstar in the making, and Golden State’s Stephen Curry, easily the greatest shooter of all time, came to a head in an individual matchup on Thursday night.
And there was more than meets the eye in star power: Their matchup wasn’t counted properly, the NBA admitted in a stat correction on Friday.
The omission happened on an early first-quarter play where Edwards intercepted a Curry pass, intending to go on the break other way. Many bettors across the country who had Edwards over 0.5 steals were ecstatic. That is until they noticed that Edwards’ teammate, Karl Anthony-Towns, was credited with the steal instead. Edwards plus steal equals Anthony-Towns?
The math didn’t add up.
Gambling Twitter was summarily lit ablaze over the controversy before the league went back and gave official credit to Edwards.
It’s the second time the NBA has had to issue a stat correction in as many days, highlighting a need for more diligent and prudent stat-keeping around the league. The first was when Chris Paul was given an assist that clearly came off the hands of wing, Mikal Bridges. Bettors again took to social media over the error, and the correction came about soon after.
Most sportsbooks will settle their bets on the day of the game, unfortunately leaving bettors, with actual successful bets, hanging out to dry. One would hope to see this lack of diligence when it comes to leaving bettors vulnerable become a lot less prominent, or even, nonexistent in the near future.
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