SACRAMENTO – Jeff Green, a career 79 percent free-throw shooter, thought he was heading to the line Wednesday night with a chance to get the Clippers within a point of the Nuggets with just 30 seconds remaining in the game.
Instead, Green’s apparent lay-in with a foul was ruled a charge, a call the league later acknowledged was incorrect in its “Last Two Minute Report.”
The game went from within the Clippers’ grasp to out of their reach in one call. For reasons such as this one, head coach Doc Rivers doubled down on his belief that coaches should get a challenge flag.
“I’ve been pushing for a flag for a year now,” Rivers said at Friday’s shootaround. “We should have a challenge flag. That’s the third time this year now that they’ve come back and said, ‘It’s a bad call.’ It doesn’t do anything for us. It really doesn’t.”
Rivers brought up the use of a challenge flag after the Clippers’ one-point loss in late December to the Thunder. The league assesses both the calls and non-calls made in the final two minutes of games that are within five points, and in that loss to Oklahoma City, the NBA acknowledged that all three of the incorrect non-calls in the final two minutes went against the Clippers.
The Clippers were furious when Dion Waiters grabbed J.J. Redick’s jersey as Redick went around a screen. The call, which the league said should’ve been made, wasn’t whistled, and the resulting shot from Redick was way off. The NBA also said the officials missed two more calls in the final 12 seconds – one a Russell Westbrook foul on Chris Paul and the other an illegal screen from Serge Ibaka. Kevin Durant would go on to hit the eventual game-winning shot.
“It’s not like officials try to make a mistake, but they do at the end of games,” Rivers said. “We’ve had two clearly game-defining calls at the end of games, then this one, that’s a three-point play which would’ve put us down one with 35 seconds left on the charge. That was a big call. Those are tough calls, and we want to get it right at the end of the day. The officials want to get it right, but it is what it is.”
Rivers’ idea is allow coaches a challenge, and if the challenge is incorrect, the challenging team loses the timeout. Rivers said there’s already been talk within the competition committee about allowing coaches to challenge, though nothing’s been decided yet.
“For playoff teams, when you think about, I don’t know if we would’ve won the Denver game, but it would’ve been a one-point game with 35 seconds left,” said Rivers, who added that twice before the Clippers lost games late which included incorrect calls the Last Two Minutes report later acknowledged. “The other two were game-changing calls. We would’ve won both of those games.”
Had they won those two games, plus the one Wednesday against Denver, Rivers said the Clippers would be sitting in a tie with Oklahoma City in third place. With playoff seeding and home court on the line, Rivers said the late calls are too important for nothing to be done.
“As a league, we just want to get it right,” Rivers said. “Everyone does, including the officials.”
