[Apologies if this has been asked before; I haven't seen anything online about it, nor could I find a reference to it in the game's manual, but I may have looked in the wrong places.]

I've been experimenting a little with making my gameplay for NBA Fastbreak substantially more deliberate/slow, in part by trapping the ball during 24-second modes and waiting for the clock to run down (the idea being to get rings and trust that I can score enough to beat the high score thru multiballs etc.). A message flashed on the screen but since I wasn't looking for it I only caught a glimpse, and I think it said something about -1 extra ball. At the time I had earned either one or two extra balls (I don't remember which), and afterwards only received one. Is this a feature meant to discourage trapping the ball through the entirety of game modes, or did I misread/hallucinate this message? If it's a real thing, out of curiosity, does it exist in other machines?

Thanks in advance!