NBA teams are having a whole lot of lip sync fun at Mariah Carey's expense

In the perfect ending to 2016, Mariah Carey suffered an epic fail of a performance on “Dick Clark’s New Year’s Rockin’ Eve with Ryan Seacrest,” as she talked over technical problems while the background tracks of her decades-old No. 1 singles “Emotions” and “We Belong Together” played to the hundreds of thousands gathered in Times Square for the ball drop and millions more watching at home.

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The infamous diva stormed off stage in disgust, tweeted, “S*** happens,” and later described the entire experience as mortifying and “a horrible” end to an otherwise “incredible holiday season.”

And nobody is having more fun at the five-time Grammy Award-winning artist’s expense than the NBA.

It took less than 24 hours for the Indiana Pacers to launch a “lip sync cam” set to Carey’s “Emotions,” with fans at Bankers Life Fieldhouse trying to sing along to the song, just as the rangy pop queen did.

And during San Antonio’s first home game back at AT&T Center, Spurs mascot “The Coyote” did the Pacers one better, dressing in the same sparkly leotard Carey sported on New Year’s Eve and lip syncing along to “Emotions,” as the team’s cheerleaders danced in the background, only to have the microphone go out and storm off the court. It was as painfully awkward as the original faux pas.

We’re guessing the New York-born Carey is a Knicks fan and wasn’t watching Pacers-Magic or Spurs-Raptors on League Pass this week, so we may never know what she thinks about the NBA’s mockery.

She has enjoyed quite the relationship with the NBA, performing a halftime tribute to Michael Jordan — complete with slim-fitting No. 23 Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards jerseys turned skirts — at the 2003 All-Star Game. And, yes, MJ almost literally Crying Jordan’d the performance during “Hero”:

She’s also sat courtside from coast to coast at Madison Square Garden and the Staples Center, and she of course showed up two hours late to a taping of “All I Want for Christmas is You” for ESPN’s NBA Christmas Day coverage in 2009, proclaiming, “I’m not that big into the NBA but I know my family is. I know my nephew will be watching the games on Christmas Day and he’ll be forced to watch me!”

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Carey’s love for basketball appeared to be back in September, when she serenaded Chicago Bulls center Robin Lopez at a Las Vegas concert — an honor RoLo dubbed the “best moment of my life“:

But like all of Carey’s relationships, it seems, she and the NBA now appear headed for a breakup.

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Ben Rohrbach is a contributor for Ball Don’t Lie and Shutdown Corner on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at rohrbach_ben@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @brohrbach