Let's make this a poll!
So, Mark Cuban has filed an official protest over this end-of-game play. There's layers to this, we'll get to them.
With ~10 seconds remaining and Atlanta leading by 2, Trae Young makes a layup attempt that gets blocked. As John Collins goes up for the rebound (which he stuffs home), ref Rodney Mott blows his whistle for goaltending, awarding the basket.
View: https://twitter.com/tenitrabatiste/status/1231414426886123520
View: https://twitter.com/fishsports/status/1231731728340914177
The refs review the goaltending call (for fucking ever) and determine that it was, in fact, a good block, and not goaltending. HOWEVER, because Collins was "already in his shooting motion" when the whistle blew, it was ruled an "inadvertent whistle" and they counted Collins' basket. Hawks now up 4 and win.
Mark Cuban contends that the teams stopped playing once they heard the call, so it's unfair to count the basket:
Instead, he says, the right thing to do is to replay the game with a jump ball with 9.7 seconds remaining and Atlanta leading by 2.
Hood's postgame explanation of the call was:
"The ball hit the rim, so it was deemed an inadvertent whistle. It’s Rule 2. Because (Collins) was in his shooting motion when my whistle blew, it’s deemed continuation, so therefore the basket counts."
Protests are filed periodically - Houston filed one earlier this season after a double-OT loss when Harden dunked the ball so hard the refs weren't sure it went through. That protest was denied. The last one to be upheld and a replay ordered was when Shaq was erroneously ruled to have fouled out back in 2007-08, 12 years ago.
But wait, there's more! Cuban went on the court twice during dead ball time to yell at people. He also compared the NBA's management abilities unfavorably to Dairy Queen. His postgame comments were captured in full here, but holy shit does he rip them a new one, this is vintage Cuban. He talked about the game but then generalized to the NBA's general ability to have a consistent training and management system that focuses on quality when it comes to refs. Snippets:
Where do you stand?
So, Mark Cuban has filed an official protest over this end-of-game play. There's layers to this, we'll get to them.
With ~10 seconds remaining and Atlanta leading by 2, Trae Young makes a layup attempt that gets blocked. As John Collins goes up for the rebound (which he stuffs home), ref Rodney Mott blows his whistle for goaltending, awarding the basket.
View: https://twitter.com/tenitrabatiste/status/1231414426886123520
View: https://twitter.com/fishsports/status/1231731728340914177
The refs review the goaltending call (for fucking ever) and determine that it was, in fact, a good block, and not goaltending. HOWEVER, because Collins was "already in his shooting motion" when the whistle blew, it was ruled an "inadvertent whistle" and they counted Collins' basket. Hawks now up 4 and win.
Mark Cuban contends that the teams stopped playing once they heard the call, so it's unfair to count the basket:
(full tweetstorm captured here)"So they call a goaltend," Cuban wrote on Twitter. "They literally blew the whistle that it was a goaltend. There was a putback after the whistle. After review they said no goaltend but count the basket? WTF is that? That's NBA officiating."
In a follow-up tweet, Cuban said: "1 of the refs told us it was an inadvertent whistle, so it was not goaltending. Doesn't matter that people stopped. They thought the whistle came after the putback. So the basket counted. So what where they reviewing if it wasn't a goaltend?"
Instead, he says, the right thing to do is to replay the game with a jump ball with 9.7 seconds remaining and Atlanta leading by 2.
Hood's postgame explanation of the call was:
"The ball hit the rim, so it was deemed an inadvertent whistle. It’s Rule 2. Because (Collins) was in his shooting motion when my whistle blew, it’s deemed continuation, so therefore the basket counts."
Protests are filed periodically - Houston filed one earlier this season after a double-OT loss when Harden dunked the ball so hard the refs weren't sure it went through. That protest was denied. The last one to be upheld and a replay ordered was when Shaq was erroneously ruled to have fouled out back in 2007-08, 12 years ago.
But wait, there's more! Cuban went on the court twice during dead ball time to yell at people. He also compared the NBA's management abilities unfavorably to Dairy Queen. His postgame comments were captured in full here, but holy shit does he rip them a new one, this is vintage Cuban. He talked about the game but then generalized to the NBA's general ability to have a consistent training and management system that focuses on quality when it comes to refs. Snippets:
The league say it is withholding judgment on any discipline for Cuban himself (for the on-court stuff and the twitter badmouthing and the postgame rant) until the ruling on the protest is made, but any serious NBA fan can be sympathetic to complaints about the consistency of officiating. Plus, as obnoxious as Cuban can be, this is one of those moments where he's just a passionate owner, acting as the fans imagine they would if they owned a team - his visible passion is probably a net positive for the league and for the Mavs. They threw the book at him over the sexual-harassment stuff ($10M to charity is no joke even to Cuban), but have let a lot of courtside stuff and social-media stuff slide.It goes back, like I just tweeted, you’ve got Ronnie Nunn, who . . . only hired people from the Ohio Valley Conference or wherever his buddies worked at. Including a former Rucker League ref who lasted only a year. And so we’re paying the price that his hiring and training was so bad that we don’t have any good refs.
And so then we went to Don Vaden, who was here two or three years. Then you went to Bob Delaney, who wanted you to go take these vitamins and go to these brain doctors and kind of forced the refs to try to do that [expletive], so we have lots of former police officers. And so out of a million refs around the world, we have this incestuous group of refs that we’ve hired, literally brothers, spouses. I don’t know which came first, the hiring or the spousing. But same high school, same cities, and then when it comes to training we sign Joey and Bennett and Wunderlich, all these guys who were former refs and go around and, according to refs I’ve talked to, spent minimal time doing video training with them.
Pop in, pop out. But that’s not really the problem. Because we’ve had such poor training, when some of the older refs retired, the ones that come and take their place are not ready. And why are they not ready? Because we had one guy running all the G-League training, George Tolliver, I think that’s who it is. One guy running all the G-League training and very little support.
So by the time they get here, if they’re not good enough already, you ain’t all of a sudden going to make them better. And I’ve said that to the league a dozen times. They said, ‘We’re going to work on it, we’re going to work on it, they’re going to work on it, we’re improving it.’ Yet, instead of having people who know how to train and develop refs, that are professional trainers, that learn from refs on mechanics and everything of what they want, we get Joey Crawford, who gets dressed up. Bennett Savatore, who gets dressed up...
Where do you stand?