Joey Crawford explains how refs nearly botched Game Six of 2013 NBA Finals

Game Six of the 2013 NBA Finals between the Spurs and Heat has already achieved mythical status less than three years after it was played, and rightly so. It had everything: a blown lead with less than 30 seconds left, in which one team looked like they were going to win the title only to lose it; a dramatic three-pointer; a hero; a goat; clutch shots; missed opportunities, you name it.

One of the officials who worked the game, the recently retired Joey Crawford, admitted that it nearly had something else: an incredibly controversial refereeing mistake that impacted how the game ended.

Crawford spoke to ESPN’s Ohm Youngmisuk about his career, and during the Q&A he divulged the details of the chaotic final seconds of regulation, in which an error by the officiating crew nearly led to chaos.

“I am looking at Duke Callahan and he was the slot [referee],” Crawford reminisced. “And Allen shoots it and it goes in and he is behind the 3-point line. So Duke says, ‘I want to go to the replay.’ I said, ‘Why?’ [Callahan says] it’s too important. So we go over and what happens? [Tim] Duncan came into the game. And he’s not allowed to come into the game [during a review]. Thank God he didn’t score a bucket [after that]. That would have been awful. So then we get fined. We blew a rule. I told Duke, ‘you should pay my fine.'”

There were 5.2 seconds left in the game when Allen tied things up. Had the Spurs scored and won the title in those 5.2 seconds, it’s entirely likely that the Heat would have had a very solid case for a protest over the fact that San Antonio had an illegal player on the floor, which would have been an almost unparalleled controversy. Given the choice of the fine or the controversy to end all controversies, Crawford was almost certainly happy to pay that fine.