Overturned out-of-bounds call proves big in Cavs’ Game 3 win
Against the odds, the Golden State Warriors nearly pulled off a second-straight fourth quarter comeback against the Cleveland Cavaliers in Game 3 of the NBA Finals on Tuesday night. Down 20 with under three minutes remaining in the third quarter, Golden State battled back and trailed just 94-91 after a Stephen Curry three-pointer with 18 seconds remaining. With some luck, they would have had a chance to tie.
[Follow Dunks Don’t Lie on Tumblr: The best slams from all of basketball]
They appeared to get that good fortune after a Cavaliers timeout. Mike Miller inbounded the ball to Matthew Dellavedova, who was quickly pressured by Klay Thompson and subsequently threw the ball away to Warriors wings Harrison Barnes and Andre Iguodala. For a second, Golden State appeared to have an opportunity.
Unfortunately for them, an inadvertent whistle stopped play. Referees Ed Malloy, Danny Crawford, and Marc Davis eventually met up and awarded the ball to the Warriors out of bounds, only to decide they would review the play after a lengthy delay. That was bad news for the Warriors, because replays clearly showed that Thompson touched the ball while stepping out of bounds as he hounded Dellavedova. Take a look:
That quick review gave the ball back to Cleveland, and Miller found LeBron James on the next inbounds pass to force a Golden State foul. James knocked down both freebies to extend the lead to five points and finish the scoring in their 96-91 victory to move up 2-1 in the series.
Not surprisingly, Warriors fans were upset about the overturned call, especially given that LeBron had executed a slide tackle on Curry to force a turnover on a previous crunch-time possession. In the specific context of this play, though, the referees got the call correct. It’s abundantly clear that Thompson stepped out of bounds before Dellavedova’s errant pass.
However, the three officials didn’t exactly cover themselves in glory. It took some time for the initial call in favor of the Warriors to be made. For that matter, the review only occurred after more dithering in which Malloy, Crawford, and Davis didn’t appear to have a great sense of when and why the relevant actions had taken place. And they were only able to review the play because of an inadvertent whistle, a mistake that just happened to lead to a correct call in this instance.
The review process exists to make sure that the referees get plays right, and in that sense we should probably be thankful that the call was overturned just so there are no arguments about the validity of the final result. In a broader sense, though, the review process is meant to inspire confidence in the quality of officiating and convince the basketball-watching world that the league and its officials know what they’re doing. From that perspective, this incident was something of a disaster.
The NBA continues to release reports on missed (and correct!) calls in crunch time in playoff game, so we’ll get a look at exactly what the league has deemed right or wrong some time before Thursday’s Game 4. As our Kelly Dwyer wrote earlier Tuesday, it’s natural for referees to get many of these calls wrong, especially when LeBron James, a sentient pickup truck, is involved in so many of them. But the review process is still very much a work in process, in terms of both how long it takes and the circumstances that allow them to check video at all.
We’re very, very likely to see another review loom large before the end of this series. In the grand scheme of things, this one wasn’t that controversial, if only for its eventual outcome. But it did serve as a reminder of how narrow the difference between a right and wrong call can be. If not for the inadvertent whistle, we might be talking about how lucky the Warriors were to get a chance at sending another tight game to overtime.
– – – – – – –
Eric Freeman is a writer for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
