Amazon's Stream Died in Overtime and Charlotte Fans Got the Last Laugh
Here's one for the blooper reel: Amazon Prime Video completely crapped out during the Heat-Hornets play-in game in overtime, and fans across the country missed LaMelo Ball basically clinching the whole thing. The stream went dark for nearly two minutes with 48.1 seconds left in the extra period, cutting off analyst Stan Van Gundy mid-sentence coming out of a timeout. When it came back, Ball had already put Charlotte up 125-120. Gone. Just like that.
Technical Nightmare in Real Time
The outage was bad enough that it started trending nationally on social media before the game even ended. LeBron James, of all people, hopped on X and called it out: "Tell me the game didn't just cut off?!!? Am I trippin?? WTH." A message saying "technical difficulties" had already started popping up on screens across the country. Fans missed 22.1 seconds of actual playing time, which doesn't sound like much until you realize it was a crucial possession that basically decided the game.
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👉 Claim Your Free $10 at KalshiCharlotte won 127-126, so that missed LaMelo layup turned out to be the dagger. Amazon's technical team scrambled to get the feed back online before the final possession, but the damage was done. Nobody on the West Coast could see the actual bucket that put the Hornets over the top.
Amazon Takes the Heat
A Prime Video spokesperson later blamed the meltdown on "a hardware failure in our production truck" and said they were doing a full internal review. The company added that their teams "restored the feed as quickly as possible to ensure fans could watch the conclusion of the game," which, yeah, thanks for that.
This is Prime's first season showing NBA games as part of the league's new 11-year, $76 billion media rights deal. They have exclusive streaming rights to all six play-in tournament games, which means there's nowhere else to watch. So when your stream dies, everyone's out of luck. Not the best look for the new partner in town.
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