Jaden Ivey summons Chris Webber and calls timeout, which Pistons don’t have in a critical late-game scenario

Avert your eyes, Michigan basketball fans. Jaden Ivey pulled a Chris Webber on Wednesday.

The Pistons rookie was tasked with returning the ball with 9.7 seconds left in a game that left Detroit 114-112 behind the Chicago Bulls. Unable to find an open man, he called time out. Standard procedure in a critical late-game situation. Except for one crucial detail.

An official whistled, but no time-out was granted. Ivey had just earned a technical foul for calling a time out that the Pistons didn’t have.

Ivey tossed the ball to the official on the touchline, then raised his hands to his head as he suddenly realized what he had done. Pistons coach Dwane Casey knew what was going on right away. TV cameras caught him falling over in despair at his rookie keeper’s mistake.

The error cost Detroit possession and sent Bulls guard Zach Lavine to the stripe for a technical free throw. He hit it to give Chicago a three-point lead and the Bulls held on to a 117-115 win.

Would the Pistons have won without Ivey’s miscue? We will never know. But the phantom timeout almost assured them they wouldn’t.

All of this, of course, is a painful reminder for Michigan basketball fans of a dramatically higher-stakes snafu from Webber when he was a sophomore for the Wolverines in 1993. Like Ivey, he called for a time-out, which Michigan did not have in crunch time. Except that he arrived during the national championship game against North Carolina.

Much like Wednesday, Weber’s Wolverines were two points down at a critical juncture in the final seconds of the game when he made the mistake. He was booed for a technical foul, and North Carolina stopped to take the national title.

Webber went into a Hall of Fame career as a five-time All-NBA player. But the 1993 hiatus remains the indelible moment of his basketball career.

Ivey’s mistake Wednesday for a last-place Pistons team looking for the riches of Victor Wembanyama’s NBA lottery is obviously not as momentous. He will continue as the mistake will go away as a simple rookie mistake.

But for fans of both the Pistons and Wolverines on Wednesday, it was an unwelcome memory.