Amazon Prime Video stream of Heat-Hornets play-in game has ‘technical difficulties’

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Amazon Prime Video’s stream of the Miami-Charlotte play-in game went offline for nearly two minutes during the overtime period, causing fans to miss a Hornets possession.

Stan Van Gundy, working the game as an analyst for Prime Video, was midsentence when the audio feed was lost coming out of a timeout with 48.1 seconds remaining. A message about “technical difficulties” began displaying on screens a few seconds later.

When the video and audio feeds resumed, Charlotte’s LaMelo Ball had scored for a 125-120 lead. Fans missed 22.1 seconds of playing time.

“Tell me the game didn’t just cut off?!!? Am I trippin?? WTH,” Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James posted on X, as the words “technical difficulties” began trending nationally across social media.

Charlotte went on to win 127-126.

A spokesperson for Prime said the issue was caused by “a hardware failure in our production truck.”

“Our teams restored the feed as quickly as possible to ensure fans could watch the conclusion of the game. We are conducting a thorough internal review to determine the cause of the outage,” the spokesperson said.

Prime Video has exclusive rights to all six games in this year’s play-in tournament. The streaming service began showing NBA games this season as part of the league’s new 11-year, $76 billion media rights deal.

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