The Pistons caught a HUGE break in game 2 when the shot-clock malfunctioned and the refs, unable to use existing technology in order to make the right call (thank you, David Stern), thought Billups got off the shot in time. This screwed the Magic pretty bad, most likely costing them a game.

The reason the refs could not check the clock is that under current rules officials are allowed to use replay only if a shot went in and the clock expires. But here are my questions:

1. since the clock stopped, the refs could have considered that it should have reached 0 and bent the rule a little bit in order to review the play. Wouldn’t a little bit of rule-bending be more desirable than costing a team a game in the playoffs ?
2. if the refs couldn’t use the replay, why not ask TNT’s courtside reporter ? You expect TNT to have already synchronized a stopwatch with the replay in their studios, so they should have the right answer. Just call Craig Sager or whoever it was and tell him to ask the studio how much time was left on the clock. The refs are supposed to make a call, but I doubt there’s anywhere in the rule book a rule saying “You’re not allowed to ask TNT’s studio”. If there’s technology that’s available, why not use it ?
3. if none of the above scenarios were deemed feasible by the refs, why not make the teams replay the sequence ? Give them 30 seconds or so to draw a play and just replay the whole thing. Let them win or lose the game on the court.

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 at 12:10 am and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.