I'm not seismologist, but I know where San Francisco is on a map, and I know how to read the United States Geological Survey's map of earthquakes from the past day.
The closest earthquake in the past day in proximity to Chase Center, where the Los Angeles Lakers came to town for a battle with the Golden State Warriors, was one that registered a magnitude of 2.5 — which is just on the border between "usually not felt" and "causes only minor damage" — and took place 12 kilometers south-southwest of Cantua Creek. Overall, that's probably around 170-180 miles away from where the game took place.
So, no Kyle Kuzma. An earthquake is not what caused your free throw to go awry.
I love the excuse though. To be honest, whatever the actual reason that caused his free throw — a technical free throw — to miss by such a large distance probably isn't as entertaining as blaming it on a non-existent earthquake, one which actually caused me to double-check with the USGS just to make sure. You never know with the Bay Area.
So, how bad was it?
Let's get an even better angle, with the full bench reaction.
If a shot like that doesn't spell the end of your knockout game, I don't know what does. Airballing a free throw isn't the end of the world — just ask LeBron.
But airballing a technical free throw is a different story, and Twitter's greatest NBA investigator was on the case soon after the play occurred. Tony Parker technically (no pun intended) never did, as his shot was clearly impacted by whatever resulted in the referees granting him a mulligan, as shown below.
I'd love to help with the investigation, but I honestly couldn't say that I've ever seen one before outside of maybe my middle school rec league, and even then I'm not sure anyone was so unfocused as to completely whiff without any distractions.
Luckily, everyone had some fun with the miss and it didn't come at some crucial moment. But unluckily (for the Warriors), that also meant that the Lakers won by a 29-point margin, and Kuzma's 17 points exceeded every Warriors player other than Stephen Curry.
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