Craiger wrote:
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Here's my take:
1. I agree that Refs shouldn't take matters into their own hands at the end of the game, especially when a team has been scrapping together a bunch of panic shots in the last few seconds. It was basically spray and pray, and if they had called a foul on a shot where the contact was incidental and where the shot would have still had a chance to go in, it would have been questionable (see: Derozan's game tying dunk in overtime against Utah. He was clearly hacked, but it was completely incidental to the shot going in, and I can at least understand why the whistle wasn't blown).
The foul on Bargs was something different altogether. When you take a jumpshot, and two people literally slap your arm, it doesn't matter how talented you are, the ball has NO chance of going in. So when the refs stay silent on a play like that, they change the game in a substantial way - they actually do the opposite of what they inted to by staying silent. They don't want to 'decide' the game, but by allowing a team to completely nullify a shot by fouling, they actually DO decide the game.
2. I, like you, didn't see the foul the first time. But that's not because it wasn't in slow motion, it's because the camera was stationed in the 500 section panning from the opposite side of the court. The baseline ref was five feet from the action. When you consider that Bargnani is 7 feet tall and his hand probably extends to like 9 feet, there is no way that refs vision could have been obstructed. And what else could he have been looking at? So, no, I didn't see the foul before the replay; but you can be SURE the ref did.
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