You’ll think that’s unbelievable. But somehow, by the evening of Tuesday, October 17, 2017, they had a professional basketball game.
When the NBA’s 70th season began in Oakland with a heartbreaking 122-121 victory for the defending champion Warriors over the defending runner-up Rockets, somehow the NBA was back in action for the first time in 69 years. It had become a truly global phenomenon. In Cleveland, the Cavaliers defeated an aging Kyrie Irving and the Celtics 102-99.
Maybe you were busy with something else that night and missed the revolution. After all, the Yankees were playing the Astros that night in Game 4 of the 2017 ALCS, and there was a merry celebration at Yankee Stadium, with the Yankees blowing up after taking a 4-0 lead over the Astros. They fought back and won 6-4. Eighth inning clutch doubles by Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez. This was before we realized it was our national duty to hate the Astros, but that night, 48,804 people filled the Bronx sky with thunder.
If you’re a Knicks fan, you’re probably hard at work preparing for next night’s season opener in Oklahoma City. So the Knicks will welcome back recently departed Carmelo Anthony for the first time as a former teammate (and maybe even did) on the final day of the season’s 29-53 tire fire that you actually noticed. was).
Either way, the world probably would be different without you.
That’s because it was the night the NBA officially began playing games under the watchful eyes of the “Last 2 Minute Report,” also known as L2M. Remember when people couldn’t sleep at night for years wondering if the world would stop working at 12:01 on January 1, 2000 because of Y2K? That’s exactly what happened. L2M is in many ways the exact opposite of Y2K. It came quietly, almost invisibly. And essentially changed the sport forever.
And that’s not a good thing.
“I don’t like it. I felt that way when I was coaching,” TNT analyst Stan Van Gundy told The Post’s Stephen Bondy a few days ago. “As a coach, that was infuriating. I don’t want to know at the end of the game that you think your players made a mistake. That doesn’t help me. I don’t understand why they would do that. yeah.”
In fact, he does it – we all do it – because the NBA has made its case for L2M very clear.
“In the name of transparency,” Van Gundy said. “But I don’t think that makes the fan base feel any better. We keep records of all these officiating things, but officials make mistakes. Guess what? Players make mistakes. Coaches make mistakes.”
L2M was weaponized like never before during the playoffs. The Knicks set themselves up for all of this with two separate instances in the regular season. One is the game they lost in Houston because the referee called a foul at the buzzer on Jalen Brunson, which the league later conceded was not a foul, and the game they won in Houston. The Garden vs. Detroit game was due to a chaotic finish in which the Pistons got about 31 legitimate beefs in the last second, all of which the league was happy to address.
Of course, Van Gundy’s words just pissed everyone off.
Because nothing comes of these public confession sessions. The game is not overturned. And see, that can’t be true. Umpires, officials, referees, they blow calls all the time, and some of them are terrible. Just ask Armando Galarraga. Just ask any Seton Hall Pirates fan. Just ask the fair citizens of St. Louis.
Bad calls happen. You will be furious for a while. And when you see Angel Hernandez or Jasin Goble doing well in the game you’re watching, you either get away with it or get night sweats.
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“Too often, instead of celebrating a great end to a game or a great play, we end up talking about how bad the officiating was,” Van Gundy said.
So Philadelphia will be given a useless consolation prize for having the referees invalidate several calls at the end of Game 2 of that series. The Knicks do the same thing at the end of Game 5. The Pacers do the same after hearing that the ball was kicked at the end of Game 1 and shouldn’t have been.
“Okay, they both made a mistake.” [76ers-Knicks] game. It was evened out by the end of the series,” Van Gundy said before Game 2, which the Knicks won. “We should talk about Brunson’s play. [Tyrese] Maxie’s shot [Donte] DiVincenzo’s shot. Those are incredibly iconic plays. Instead, all anyone wants to talk about is the referee. That’s too bad. “
Amen.
