P.J. Tucker Randomly Decides The Ball Has Cooties, Refuses To Touch It

I defy you to make sense of this sequence, from late in Houston’s road win over the lousy Knicks. The Rockets were up three after an Allonzo Trier free throw with 59 seconds on the clock. The Knicks pressed up the court to deny the inbound to James Harden, who went for another 61 points in the game. Eric Gordon, doing the inbounding, quickly dropped the ball to teammate P.J. Tucker, standing unchecked along the baseline. That is when this happened:

P.J. Tucker is usually an alert and heady guy! Did he think the Knicks were supposed to be inbounding? Did he think he was running out the clock somehow? Did he think Harden would swoop down and pick up the ball? Mike D’Antoni says Tucker had “300 things” going through his mind, but apparently was confused about whether he was in bounds or out of bounds, and whether Eric Gordon had actually inbounded the ball, or fuck man I don’t know:

I think Tucker was so confused by the idea of a Rocket other than James Harden handling the ball in a late-game situation that his brain shorted out.