Raptors will protest final play against Kings
Ujiri willing to pay $10,000 to argue game should be ‘decided between the lines’
LOS ANGELES— A sense of fair play, and a desire to have a game decided on a basketball court rather than a replay centre, has led Masai Ujiri to wager big on his ability to change the minds of NBA officials.
Ujiri will launch an official protest with the NBA over a video review that overturned a game-tying basket at the end of the Toronto Raptors’ 102-99 loss in Sacramento on Sunday.
“For 47-plus minutes, both teams played a tough, hard-fought game,” the Raptors president said. “It wasn’t the perfect game by any measure, players made shots and missed some too, but the game was ultimately being decided between the lines.
“Unfortunately, the final 2.4 seconds were decided by someone who wasn’t even in the arena. There’s a human element to every game of basketball and we missed it on the most important play of the game last night in Sacramento.”
It will cost the Raptors $10,000 (U.S.) to make the protest — they get the money back if they are successful — and they have five business days to submit evidence. The league then has five days to make its ruling.
There has been one successful protest in the past three decades of NBA play. It came when Miami won a protest over the disqualification of Shaquille O’Neal because he had incorrectly been assessed a personal foul in a game against the Atlanta Hawks in January 2008. There has never been a result overturned, or a segment of a game replayed, because of a timing issue.
What the actual protest is will determine when, if at all, the game would be resumed. The Raptors could get the 2.4 seconds back and have to hit another shot to tie, or they could get a five-minute overtime period to determine the winner. That will be determined when the official paperwork is filed.
But Ujiri’s concerns go beyond just one game. The longer-term implications are serious, he said.
“Mistakes in basketball are inevitable, we deal with them on a daily basis no matter the team or player. But wins and losses in the NBA are finite and last night goes down as a loss on our record,” he said. “At some point, these calls start piling up and matter at the end of the season. Calls like these are demoralizing to our players, coaches, staff, and even our fans. We all expect better than this.”
Ujiri felt Ross, whose shot started the controversy, was playing against the clock he saw in the arena and could very well have altered his timing had he known there was a prob- lem.
“When Terrence caught the ball near half court, he knew he only had a couple of seconds to shoot the ball before time expired, but he also knew he had a clock above the backboard to glance up at as time winded down,” the president said. “Unfortunately, the clock he needed to look at was in New Jersey.”
The play will be forever etched in the minds of players and fans: Down three points with 2.4 seconds left on the game clock, the Raptors appeared to have miraculously tied it on a Ross desperation shot at the buzzer. But three on-court officials determined the clock hadn’t started when Sacramento’s DeMarcus Cousins deflected an inbounds pass and after referee Zach Zarba watched the play at the league’s replay centre in Secaucus, N.J., he determined Ross did not get the shot off before the buzzer should have sounded.
The officials felt there was a “clock malfunction” when it didn’t start the split second that Cousins touched DeMarre Carroll’s inbounds pass.
The Raptors have an ally in Los Angeles Clippers coach Doc Rivers, who called the play “unfair.”
“I don’t think you should be able to go look at the clock and do that,” Rivers said. “I don’t think you should look at a video and see right when a guy touches it because that is not realistic either. It’s human error. We can’t take everything out of the game.”
As dismayed as the Raptors were, the winners were equally surprised by the call. It’s not that the Kings didn’t think they’d won, they just didn’t think they would be the benefit of the review.
“I knew I tipped it, I knew he didn’t get it off in time,” Cousins told reporters after the game. “I knew the clock didn’t start on time. I also knew we were going into overtime. That’s how things usually work for us, meaning the Kings.”