The Milwaukee Bucks are having a hard enough time this season without the referees making glaring mistakes.
The Bucks’ latest loss came Saturday against the Charlotte Hornets, in which the game went down to one drive, resulting in LaMelo Ball on the ground and the officials blowing the whistle. The Bucks led 114-113 with 7.3 seconds left when Ball was awarded two free throws, which he made.
The foul was called on Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo, but the replay showed he had done little more than graze Ball with his hand. The ball simply slipped when he started to take a ride, or as the Hornets broadcast put it, tripped over his own Pumas:
Unfortunately for the Bucks, they had no challenge to reverse the foul. Bucks head coach Doc Rivers had both challenges left with three minutes left, but successfully used one to stop a foul call on Andre Jackson Jr. with 2:46 to go, then unsuccessfully used the other to challenge a call on Taurean Prince.
Antetokounmpo, who had a triple-double with 22 points, 15 rebounds and 12 assists, was unsurprisingly furious with the officials.
The call was so egregious that crew chief Curtis Blair admitted in an interview with a pool reporter that his team had messed up after the game. If Rivers still had a challenge, he would have won it.
From the NBA:
QUESTION: What was the final decision in confirming the call?
BLAIR: While playing live, we made illegal leg-to-leg calls to get in touch. When we looked at the game during the postgame review, there was no illegal contact during the game.
QUESTION: So if there was a challenge, which wasn’t there at the time because Milwaukee didn’t have one available, that call would have been overturned?
Rivers agreed, via The Athletic:
“Obviously there was no foul,” Bucks coach Doc Rivers said. “If you watch the video, the referee was blocked by one of our players. At the end of the game you can’t guess. Both teams played too hard.”
The loss was another brutal defeat for the Bucks, whose record is 4-9 this season and 21-28 under Doc Rivers. The team was missing star point guard Damian Lillard, who remains in the concussion protocol, but was ultimately eliminated on an 18-5 made free throw lapse.
