Eric Bledsoe able to laugh at himself, and tweets, over his inbounding gaffe

LOS ANGELES - The referee handed the ball to Eric Bledsoe along the sideline at Staples Center with about 10 minutes left in the fourth quarter. The Los Angeles Clippers weren't pressing and all Bledsoe had to do was pass the ball into Giannis Antetokounmpo.

He didn't pass the ball in. Instead, Bledsoe inexplicably turned and started dribbling across the court. The official, Mitchell Ervin, apparently shocked by Bledsoe's mental lapse, took a moment and blew the whistle, calling an inbound infraction and giving the ball to the Clippers.

The play ultimately didn't affect the outcome of the game – the Milwaukee Bucks won, 129-124 on Wednesday night – but it did go viral at Bledsoe's expense.

Bledsoe, who laughed at himself and the funny tweets at his expense in the locker room, offered the following explanation:

"It was a bad call. I think J.R. (Smith) called me on the phone at halftime and told me I had to make a little play. I had to laugh it off, man. It was funny."

Somehow, Antetokounmpo tried to take the blame for Bledsoe's gaffe.

“No, that’s my fault," Antetokounmpo said. "I messed him up. … I called a play and it was my fault because I should not call the play until he inbounds the ball. He was focused on the play to get to the right spot and that’s why he took the ball and left.”

While Antetokounmpo tried to shoulder the blame, not all of Bledsoe's teammates were as kind.

“That was funny," George Hill said. "I didn’t think he did it until I was like, ‘Oh, he really did that.’ But you know, it’s basketball sometimes. Sometimes you got those little brain farts and that was his.”

Unsurprisingly, that mental lapse immediately went viral with plenty of people chiming in on Twitter.