Mark Cuban hops on Twitter to slyly no-call a referee’s no-call
In one of the better games of the NBA’s regular season thus far, the Cleveland Cavaliers topped the Dallas Mavericks in overtime on Tuesday night, starting off the team’s toughest stretch of the season (Mavs, Rockets, Spurs on the road; Warriors at home) in spectacular fashion.
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The Mavs were game to hang with the defending Eastern champs for so long, but for Mavs owner Mark Cuban, that wasn’t enough. With less than two minutes to go in OT, Dallas point guard Deron Williams went in for a layup that could have put the Mavericks up by three points, and LeBron James came swooping in to defend.
Via Whitney Medworth and Mike Prada at SB Nation, watch what happened next:
Mark?
Mark Cuban is not wrong, here. Deron Williams’ layup, let’s be honest, wasn’t going in; but that’s not the point. If you touch any part of the goal – rim, net, backboard, shot clock (it is LeBron, after all), basket stanchion – it’s technically goaltending. And goaltending is an infraction and should be called. Two points.
It was a rough loss for Dallas, working on the front end of a back to back, trying to secure a rare win over a championship contending team during what has been a fantastic season – this well-coached group is really overachieving. The squad will probably have to rest veteran starters plus the recovering Chandler Parsons against Oklahoma City in Oklahoma City on Wednesday night as a result of not only the schedule, but the overtime workload.
You get the feeling Dallas had this back-to-back pegged as a chance to make some noise against the elite. Somewhat infamously, save for a win over the Clippers and perhaps making history as one of two teams to beat Golden State in 2015-16, the Mavs just don’t have a ton of quality wins, despite ranking fifth in the West.
You don’t see a lot of NBA owners passively/aggressively whining about calls on Twitter, but then again Cuban has come a long way from the 2000-01 season, when he raced on the court during a fight featuring Maverick Gary Trent (as if he could contribute), or when he posted a freeze-frame image of an uncalled goaltend from then-Piston Jerry Stackhouse on his stadium scoreboard postgame for all to see.
The dude really hates his goaltends. If NBA owners vote 29-1 to allow international goaltend rules to make their way into this league, you know who the “1” is going to be.
Then again, we’re in the second week in January. Mark Cuban has nothing on Jerry Sloan:
That’s Chicago Bull Scottie Pippen grabbing the rim and altering what could have been a game-winning layup from Shandon Anderson in Game 6 of the 1997 NBA Finals. Anderson’s reverse probably also wasn’t going in, but it should have been a goaltending call, and even though the Bulls would get one final possession, those two points could have forced a seventh game. Michael Jordan’s Bulls were just 1-1 in seventh games at that point, and who knows what would have gone down a couple of days later?
Instead of working from two points down, Jordan ended up passing to Steve Kerr for a championship-winning shot. To this day, Jerry Sloan still probably sees an image of Pippen’s hand on the rim in every eye-high stalk of corn he wanders past at four in the morning.
So, no, Deron Williams didn’t get the call in Dallas’ 39th game of the season, but at least Mark Cuban wasn’t screwed over by the refs in the Finals.
(Again.)
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter! Follow @KDonhoops
