Reporter's Crazy Basketball Shot: Real or Faked?

My first thought was that it was faked. I thought the reporter either dropped the ball the instant before he 'threw' it or tossed it forward over the camera, and then a pre-rigged basketball was released to drop through the hoop.

But then I noticed the reflection of the ball off the backboard glass at about the 11 second mark. It also passed between some lights and the glass causing the reflection of the lights to momentarily blink. I can't imagine them photo-shopping that level of detail just for a prank, so I think it was another very lucky shot that did go through the hoop.

I have no reason to believe it was faked for whatever reason. Such a shot is pure luck, like making a hole-in-one in golf.

The shot looks legit, but the math is a little flakey. The flight path will be hyperbolic, not triangular. Any common artillaryman worth his salt could do a better analysis...

Ignoring air resistance, the path is parabolic. In this case, it looked like about 1.5 seconds, a bit less than half being upward from say 7 feet, and a bit less than half downward to 10 feet. From apex to basket, height ≈ -16t² ≈ -16(0.7)² ≈ -7.84 feet. The horizontal distance of ~40 feet in 1.5 seconds ≈ 26.7 feet/second ≈ 18.2 mph, which is entirely reasonable.

This doesn't yet account for angles of throw and basket entry, which I would roughly guess as 30°. This too seems reasonable, albeit quite lucky. I would guess the shot was real, but can't be sure.

Having played the game and even once hit a "hail Mary" at the half time buzzer, the shot can be made with a range of launch angles and therefore resulting air times. To me it "seemed" to arrive a little sooner than the "feel" of the launch angle and velocity, but that is just my perception. Since the actual time falls reasonably between the calculated times and the earlier mentioned observations, I would place the likelihood of the shot being real at 95% or greater.