ESPN apologizes for World Trade Center Twin Towers stock footage during Heat-Knicks game

ESPN has apologized for using old stock footage video during Sunday's broadcast of a playoff game between the Miami Heat and the New York Knicks that briefly showed the World Trade Center's Twin Towers.

The game, an eventual 108-101 Miami victory, aired on ABC and showed the footage during a cutaway to commercial break during halftime. In the footage, the Statue of Liberty is visible in the foreground and, at the very bottom of the screen, the tops of the Twin Towers are unmistakably visible in the distance.

"We mistakenly used an old stock image and we apologize," senior director, communications at ESPN Ben Cafardo wrote Sunday in an email statement to Awful Announcing.

It is common for broadcasts to feature stock footage from the hosting city of sporting events that networks use to enhance broadcasts. This can lead to issues, however, when visible landmarks in the footage clearly date the images, such as in this case. Several viewers watching the broadcast took to social media to express their disapproval of the use of the footage.

The Twin Towers collapsed September 11, 2001 during the terrorist attack in which planes crashed into the buildings.

This is not the first time there has been a broadcast mishap involving the World Trade Center; Fox Sports had to apologize in July after it superimposed the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox logos onto the memorial pools at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center site leading into a commercial break.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: ESPN apologizes for Twin Towers stock footage during Heat-Knicks game