So, watching the boxscore from the Oklahoma City Thunder versus Memphis Grizzlies playoffs game tonight, with the Clippers to come next … and I had a flashback to the media work room at Staples Center in Los Angeles.

And the anxiety produced when the game before the game dragging on too long.

I don’t even have to look this up.

This is an TNT night, isn’t it?

The cable station with secondary NBA broadcast rights, which tends to show all the weeknight games. Generally one after the other, with the Pacific Coast game — historically, the Lakers — at the end of the schedule.

And most of the print guys –when the games were in L.A. — would be sitting inside that dark and claustrophobic work room, at floor level, the one with maybe 30 work stations and writers sitting about 18 inches apart.

Most of us would not go out to our seats around the lower levels of the arena until the previous game was done … because it might be interesting or have bearing on what was about to happen with the Lakers (talking 2009 and earlier, here) …

Plus, all of us, conscious of deadline, would want to mentally urge on that Midwest game to the finish line. “Please end, for the love of God.”

Tonight? The Clippers game with Golden State was scheduled for a 7:30 p.m. start, in Oakland.

Had it been a Clippers home game, I can see in my mind’s eye the writers jammed into the Staples work room, who never for a minute really believed in that alleged 7:30 p.m. start.

It would be up to how quickly — or, more accurately, how slowly — the OKC-Memphis game finished.

By my clock, they didn’t get done in Tennessee until 7:45 p.m., and the Clippers and Warriors didn’t tip off until 7:48 — or 18 minutes late.

Which is 18 minutes closer to deadline than a literal person (7:30 p.m. start? then you should start at 7:30 p.m.) would expect.

I always hated that. That 15-20 minutes to play the final five minutes of the earlier TNT game. The NBA isn’t as bad as college basketball, which can turn the last five minutes into a half hour, but it’s getting there, and the league rarely has 2.5-hour games anymore. Not in the playoffs. Yet they continue to slot 2.5 hours for these to finish.

And does any other major North American sports league routinely do that? Just hold the start of a playoffs game because an earlier one hasn’t started? Baseball doesn’t, does it? The NFL doesn’t. You join “in progress”.

But the NBA and TNT make us wait.

Anyway, I haven’t been around that for five years. Yet that whole anxious stretch, and watching the minutes tick away, and knowing we have five minutes less than we thought, till deadline … no, 10 minutes less … no, 15 minutes less … suddenly was vivid in my head, from 10,000 miles away.

That stuff was painful. A sort of torture. And it came back to me, sitting in Abu Dhabi, an unpleasant blast from the past. Those games dragged out when the outcome was so very clear — like OKC’s victory tonight.

Best wishes, all you deadline writers, in California. You have 18 fewer minutes to write than you thought. You were braced for it, you expected the worst, but you could always hope.