IN THE LANE
REASONABLE POINTS: It started Thursday with the Sun Sentinel’s posting of a story about how the NBA Last Two Minute officiating report said the referees missed a critical late five-second inbounding violation by a Heat opponent for the second time in a week, grading the call in the overtime loss to the Sacramento Kings as INC, for incorrect. But it didn’t stop there. The reply from the referee union’s official Twitter account read, “A fundamental flaw with the L2M leads to this sort of media reaction. The 5-second violation should not have been an INC — our stopwatch has it within a couple tenths of a second. To expect a human to be as exact as a stopwatch is unreasonable. The referee followed protocol.” The response from the NBA, on their Twitter, was, “This is not accurate; all calls in L2Ms are evaluated by reviewers trained to rate plays the way officials are instructed to call them; their decisions are approved by ref ops senior staff (former officials) and senior b-ball ops personnel, all with many years of NBA experience.”
WHAT NEXT?: Which is why, as we pointed out in this space a few weeks back, such five-second violations should be timed electronically, just as 24- and 8-second violations are. Again (as we also previously pointed out), no two people count to five in the exact same amount of time. In addition, some sort of visible 5-second clock would make it easier for the player inbounding to call for a timeout (if one remains).
FUN? FUN!: So how much fun is it to be part of a competitive playoff race? Amid his team’s uneven ride in the ever-changing middle of the Eastern Conference playoff pack, Washington Wizards coach Scott Brooks offered his spin on the subject during last week’s visit to American-Airlines Arena. “Fun is the right word. It is fun,” Brooks said. “Every night is a playoff atmosphere. You can go on a nice stretch and move yourself up in the standings or you can go the other way and knock yourself out in the standings, if you don’t come to play every night.”
NOT HAPPENING: The Cleveland Cavaliers’ road game against the Phoenix Suns afforded LeBron James the opportunity to reconnect with former Miami Heat and Cavaliers championship teammate James Jones, who retired from the Cavaliers last season to becomes the Suns’ vice president of basketball operations. “That’s my guy,” James told reporters. “I’m happy for him and the opportunity he’s got here. He’ll be great. He gets it and he knows talent, he knows work ethic and he knows basketball people.” He also knows how to stay in shape, which had James quipping about a reunion for Cleveland’s playoff run. “He looks leaner than he did when he played and he was already lean,” he said. “I’d love to have Champ around.”
SPEAKING OF: With Jones in place in Phoenix, don’t sleep on former Heat assistant coach David Fizdale as a possible successor to interim Suns coach Jay Triano. Fizdale was popular with the players during the Heat’s Big Three championship era as a conduit to coach Erik
Spoelstra. Fizdale has been dabbling in broadcasting since being fired by the Memphis Grizzlies earlier this season.