Donovan Mitchell did, certainly, bounce the gun.
The NBA concluded in its Last Two Minutes (L2M) Report that officers didn’t correctly whistle Mitchell for a lane violation when he rebounded his personal missed free throw with the Cavaliers down one on the sport’s last possession.
Instead of a whistle — which might have given the Nets possession of the ball up one with solely seconds left on the clock — Mitchell tried to put-back his personal miss. A bunch of Nets denied him on the rim, however the ball slipped away into Caris LeVert’s arms.
LeVert discovered Cavs guard Isaac Okoro within the nook for a game-winning three.
“I didn’t look at it real closely, but it’s pretty interesting, the way it came off, a lot of times, it doesn’t get back to the shooter without it being a violation,” Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn mentioned after the loss. “So I’ll take a quick look at it when I get back in there, but it’ll be interesting to see.”
The missed lane violation name was one among two officiating blunders highlighted within the L2M Report. The league additionally decided officers incorrectly known as a foul on Nic Claxton when he certainly acquired all ball and solely made “incidental contact” with LeVert’s hand on a drive to the rim on the 1:52 mark within the fourth quarter.
“If they call, it they call it,” Nets ahead Royce O’Neale mentioned postgame. “I stopped trying to be a ref and just play basketball.”
Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie will get into his fair proportion of arguments with officers however mentioned the end result of the sport was hardly selected one missed name. The Nets led by 10 halfway by way of the fourth and held an eight-point lead with underneath three minutes left earlier than the Cavs went on a 12-2 run to shut the sport.
“At the end of the day, listen: I’m as hard on the refs as anyone, but we had to get to that point,” he mentioned. “That’s a bang, bang play, it’s not like he shoved somebody out of bounds or something crazy where we got super slighted. We had to have a cascade of events to even got there. So we gotta be accountable for that.”
The Nets have misplaced 5 in a row and look to snap their dropping streak in Miami in opposition to the identical Heat group that leapfrogged them within the standings on Thursday.
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Source: www.bostonherald.com