Denied: Rockets lose protest of Spurs game

This year the NBA wants either Lakers, or Clippers to win the trophy. So watch Rockets games, but in this years playoffs, if it gets to game 7 against Lebron, the Rockets won't win. Westbrook can have a triple, double, and Harden 50 points, but NBA wants Lebron to win.NBA wants highest TV ratings. That would be Lebron, not Harden.

 

LOL what? Score is the most relevant thing in basketball. The score dicates who wins and who loses.

 

pretty sure the best fans dictate who wins and loses @tinman

#pure

 

Again, if you get into the probability of winning, then the scenario of deducting two points at the beginning of the game applies too. But nobody would think that it would be a fair way to assess the damage.

In my opinion, the only justification for NOT doing anything about the mistake is that the cost of doing it outweighs the worth of the remedy. One might argue that the game is not as important as, say a playoffs game that warrant the trouble of replaying the game. Or that there are other mistakes (e.g. a blatant wrong call that cost a basket AND a 4-point play at the other end) that cost the wronged team more than just two points that would not warrant a drastic remedy after the fact.

IF they were to do anything, in this case, should simply give the Rockets the win. It is similar to adding a point later when a shot was proved to be a 3-point rather than a 2-point basket. The only difference is that the officials admitted the mistake AFTER the game had been over. If the protest happened right before the game was over with the score tied and was allowed, then they would have been given two points and won the game.

 

lol the NBA won't let Harden have a good game to cover their tracks.

What will happen in that situation is the NBA will call multiple offensive fouls on Harden like we've seen before and all those turnovers will seal the deal for the Lakers to win.

Harden is the perfect fall guy in the league. Outside of Rockets fans, he's the most hated player in the league so there is zero sympathy for him even if the refs "screw up" on those calls against him.

 

actual history: wilt harden undercut & maimed without consequence, forced to play series with one eye still averaging 35/7/6 on 44%
media's version: osama bin harden doesn't show up in the playoffs

 

What is the scenario you are talking about? If the same play happened at the very beginning of the game, the same reasoning applies. A low leverage moment, and moreover the cost of granting the protest this time is to replay a full game and not just 8 minutes. So, in that circumstance, I’d guess that the NBA would be even less willing to grant the protest.

No, I don’t think it can be as simple as “a single regular season win is not worth potentially going back and changing the outcome”, if that’s what you mean. If this happened at the very end of the game while the score was tied, and it resulted in the Rockets losing, the league would have to treat that differently.

 

Keep making excuses. We may be facing a biased league office but the players can still control the outcome of games.

 

Players only LMAO!!!

 

You think the NBA wanted Toronto to win a Championship last year?

 

Seriously doubt they knew the Warriors would have multiple injuries. I don’t think it’s 100% rigged but I’m definitely in the camp the believes they have agendas.

 

Don't forget Toronto has one of the largest markets in the whole league. As the sole Canadian team it has a potential local market of almost 40M people, as well as international fans. NBA definitely benefited from them winning.

 

The NBA's partners and broadcasters didn't.

 

so its the Rocket's players fault those 2 points were taken from them?

 

It's the Rockets players fault they blew an 8 point lead to scrubs. Yes.

 

I think what benefits the NBA will benefit those partners/broadcasters too in the long-run. More NBA fans and more large markets means more potential customers / target audience for the companies buying ads, and in turn more money for the broadcasters.

 

so they deserved 2 points taken away from them by the league?

 

I am talking about a hypothetical intentional deducting of two point at the beginning of the game and tell the team that it's on them to overcome it. The damage is similar. But why do we think that it is a blatant injustice for the team? If you are talking about the probability of winning, then yes, the damage would not be that big. But any reasonable person would agree that asking the team to overcome an undeserved deficit is extremely unfair. The only difference is that one is intentional and the other is not. But your reasoning is not about intention. It's about probability. My point is that probability is not the most important assessment for fairness and justice.

 

I’m trying to explain the rationale behind the league’s ruling, as I understand it, under a situation where what happened is assumed to be an unintentional error in the application of the coaching challenge rule.

If for some nefarious reason the refs or scorekeeper decided to just dock the Rockets two points to screw them, that’s a much more serious problem as you point out. And it warrants a more drastic remedy.

 

I would say it was just a simple 'no claim - no gain' which ended up in 'no win - no fee' (but 10k fee) lol. At at the end of the day we got screwed up twice not including Kings game, Rockets river... Morey should try some more clever ways to stop this anti-Rocketism from happening in NBA.