The final day of the 2023-24 regular season saw several playoff teams jockeying for seeding, other teams trying to improve draft lottery odds and a few just hoping to end the campaign on a high note.
The Houston Rockets, who had made an unsuccessful late charge for the Play-In Tournament, fell into the latter category, looking for their first non-losing record since the 2019-20 season.
As it turned out Sunday, the Rockets and Los Angeles Clippers fans both took home a win.
With 4 minutes, 44 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter of Houston’s eventual 116-105 victory over the Clippers, center Boban Marjanović missed his first free throw. Marjanović — a career 76.4 percent free-throw shooter — then purposefully missed the second to win fans in attendance free chicken.
The Clippers organization runs a promo in which attending fans get free chicken if the opposition misses two consecutive free throws in the fourth quarter. So the Clippers faithful, who had seen its backups fight admirably all game, finally had something to cheer about, prompting the rising crescendo.
Boban.
Man of the people. 🍗 pic.twitter.com/PRq6xIXxIW
— NBA (@NBA) April 15, 2024
Rewarding home fans when two consecutive fourth-quarter free throws are missed has grown in popularity in recent years. In some blowouts when the end-of-bench players finally take the floor, some players miss the first free throw, getting the crowd riled up, only to make the second and mock them.
But if there was anyone in the NBA who would purposely miss to ensure that fans would go home with a reward, it would be Marjanović, who is arguably the nicest professional basketball player on the planet.
A finalist for this season’s NBA’s sportsmanship award, the former Clippers fan favorite has made a career of kindhearted gestures at his various stops around the league.
As soon as the second free throw rolled off the side of the rim, Marjanović raised one finger in the air, reminding the ongoers whom to thank for the free Chick-fil-A.
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(Photo: Adam Pantozzi / Getty Images)