At the end of this unbreathable Game 6 between Heat and Celtics, some immediately questioned the role of arbitration in deciding the fate of the meeting.
Al Horford’s foul on Jimmy Butler, who offered three free throws to the latter a handful of seconds from the buzzer, was at the center of the debate, in particular about the precise time remaining on the clock. When you know the final outcome, with Derrick White’s “buzzer beater”, every hundredth counts…
But the league in his famous report on the refereeing decisions of the last two minutes, found no complaints about the action in question. Originally, the referee called a foul, on what he thought was a 2-point shot, with 2.1 seconds left.
Only Joe Mazzulla used his “challenge” to contest the whistle. The officials thus reviewed the action in its entirety and found that the fault had been committed while Butler was well behind the arc. And above all that the fault occurred at 3.0 seconds » from the end, the referees thus having « adjusted the stopwatch accordingly “, with 0.9 seconds added for the ultimate possession of the Celtics.
Resumption of dribble or not?
The other debate on the action of the Heat player, in front of the interior of the Celtics, concerned a possible resumption of dribble committed before firing his shot. There too, the report is formal: the Florida leader lost control of the ball at the end of the dribble, recovered it and then tried ” legally his shot. This should extinguish the beginning of controversy about this decisive action, finally swept away by the last gesture of White.
The same report, however, notes that officials missed two decisions among the 32 the league considered in the last 120 seconds of play: a violation by Caleb Martin, who put his foot in the key too soon, on a pitch- frank missed by Jaylen Brown, one minute from the end. And above all a fault, 30 seconds from the end, by Gabe Vincent, on a penetration by Jayson Tatum, finally countered.
