You might recall that the Miami Heat successfully protested the result of their Dec. 19, 2007, loss to the Atlanta Hawks because the official scorer improperly determined that Shaquille O'Neal had fouled out with 51.9 seconds left in overtime with the Hawks up 114-111. The Hawks went on to win the game. As a remedy, the league determined that the teams would replay the final 51.9 seconds this Saturday in Atlanta.
Have you caught on to the problem yet?
Shaq doesn't play for the Heat anymore. The Heat will still be without him for the final 51.9 seconds. Further, the Heat now have Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks while the Hawks parted with four players to obtain Mike Bibby. How did the league decide to resolve the issue? Surely not by flying all the December 19th Hawks and Heat to Atlanta to play less than a minute of basketball. They basically were forced to rule that all CURRENT Hawks and Heat players were eligible to participate in the make-up minute (with the exception of Hawks forward Josh Smith, who had fouled out at that point).
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Shawn Marion can play for two different teams on two different coasts simultaneouslyThis leaves us with potentially the first game in NBA history started by one set of rosters and completed by another. Future civilizations will be confused when the official game books are entered and it appears that Shawn Marion played 51.9 seconds for the Miami Heat on the same night he played for the Suns netting 23 pts and 10 rebounds. If you look at the scoreboard, the Dec. 19th Heat/Hawks game is still listed as "suspended" with 51 seconds left in OT. Marion will statistically be on two teams on opposite ends of the country at the same time.
This could all be avoided in the future if the league mandates that all official scorer be polydacytlous, possessing at least six fingers on each hand. Make it so Mr. Stern.
13 Responses:
Seriously, if the refs mess up, the refs mess up, but it shouldn't be replayed. Their chance to protest is during the game, not afterwards.
Even if trades weren't the issue (which should have been totally foreseeable) injuries could have been an issue.
The whole thing is stupid.
Technically a protest is lodged when one team believes the officials have misapplied the rules resulting in the outcome being in doubt. In this case, the official scorer did not misapply the rule. The rule is that a player with six fouls is disqualified. He miscounted, which is no more correctable an error than a miscalled travel or carry or contact foul.
I don't think the Heat would protest if this happened now, when they're just playing for lottery position.
Hawks coach Mike Woodson is already in hot water, and a loss to the Heat would be nothing but bad. Apparently, the Hawks management think they should be in the playoffs this year, and if it doesn't happen, heads will roll. I guess it's true that a long playoff drought in the East is pretty inexcusable.
Exactly, J-Red. I meant protest literally, not in the official terminology of the NBA.
You can't replay games every time a referee makes a mistake.
Like I said, it's stupid. I'm glad we all agree.
Hey Giant fake Basketball fan!
This isn't the first time it has happened. There is another VERY famous instance.
Why don't you go look it up.
It wasn't the official's who blew the call. It was the Hawks' scorers up top who tally numbers on the scoreboard. They were to blame and were fined 50k. Officials make mistakes, but we can't replay games because of it. It's not their job to count fouls. But if the opposing team's scorers "forget" to add a foul to their star player or something like that, then it's clearly grounds for a do over. In this case, if I were the Heat I would take the 50k fine and leave the result. I want that #1 pick.
Aldo, I disagree. If the NBA is too dumb to have homers counting the official number of fouls, then they have to live with the result of that kind of stupidity.
After MSU beat UM in 2001 because the MSU time-keeper gave the Spartans an extra second, the Big Ten realized they could no longer have hometown people keeping the time and changed the rule. They did not, however, change the result of the game.
This happened before, I can't remember who it was but another player has scored for different teams in the same game because of the same basic thing.
guyinthecorner: The last game overturned by protest was in 1982, so I'd have to assume that when this happened in the past I was in diapers.
Why do I have a feeling you just read it somewhere else and pretended you knew it all along?
Now that I've done some research, I see that the 1982 Lakers-Spurs protest replay only replayed the last second of that game. No one scored, so unless there is another famous protest game prior to that, I don't see how there was another "famous" incident in which the same player scored for two different teams on two different coasts at approximately the same time (Hawks/Heat game started at 7:30 and went OT, enter Marion. Marion already played a game that began at 9:00p OT in Phoenix.)
Does the game even need to be replayed since Shaq won't even be there and he was the one that fouled out? Is it fair that Shaq will now be replaced by Marion (or someone else) who won't have 5 fouls?
1. this wasn't a case of a homer "mistakenly" adding a foul. it was a mixup that occurred earlier in the game by the scorers (assigned the wrong foul - i think it was meant to go to udonis haslem). its a correctable mistake, unlike a decision on the floor which could never be successfully protested (a ref's call is subjective). the scorers shouldn't make a mistake (i'm surprised that the heat staff never picked up on it at the time seeing as they track everything).
2. the "famous" case i think was in the 70s - it was mentioned it every article about this when it first surfaced. basically the 2 teams involved in that case actually completed a trade after the protested game, but before the replay, meaning a bunch of players actually played for both teams in the one game when the replay happened later in the season.
See guys. I say we should spring the $25,000 a year for Elias' assistance, but NOOOOOOOO you want to trust Google.
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