[Raymond]

Originally Posted by MD Longhorn

So many ways to answer this....

I guess the simplest is that if two events are unrelated, then if you determine the time they occurred with infinite precision, it is completely impossible for them to have occurred at exactly the same moment in time. This was proven by Einstein in 1905.

If you introduce greater distances than those available during a basketball game, where the speed of light matters, you introduce new definitions of simultaneity as well as concepts like actual time, local time, and aethereal time... and if you introduce objects moving at much greater speed, you introduce apparent time - any of those require a broader definitions of "simultaneous".

But for the purposes of this... can we just say, "because Einstein said so" and move on?

I prefer Tuesday Morning Quarterback (Gregg Easterbrook) who says the the human eye/brain cannot distinguish such infintesimal increments of time. So in real world application separate events can happen simultaneously.