Olympiacos won in Valencia, 102-97, after overtime. They were down 62-34 at the start of the third quarter. And seventeen minutes later, Mbaye Ndiaye puts them in front, 88-86. That’s a moment. So I’m doing it again. My mic, my hall, Saturday, half past eight.
The two school fête spotlights on the table. The caretaker switches off half the strip lights, as usual. Me: “Mesdames et messieurs, dames en heren. Seventeen minutes. Twenty-eight points. And the basket that puts them in front…” Two seconds of silence. “Mbaaaye… Ndiaye!” [jingle] Make some noise.
And then the sound system has an opinion. I cut that jingle for a buzzer-beater, not for a seventeen-minute comeback. It lasts nine seconds. I’m short sixteen minutes and fifty-one seconds of music.
Because the real problem with a comeback is that there’s no exact moment. It’s one very long moment. The previous record belongs to Prokom, in 2012/13, down by twenty-eight at home against Montepaschi Siena. Nobody had done it since. You don’t prepare a jingle for something that never happens.
Seventeen minutes on the clock. Your jingle, I’m not noting it.
Both teams now have four wins from five games. Same record, and only one of them had the moment. I replayed the jingle nine times into the empty hall, on a loop, just to see. It makes noise, nothing more.
It’s true, we checked: Eurohoops.
