It didn’t take long for us to have one of the first shot clock millisecond instant review plays of the year. With the Bulls down by a point against the Nuggets and 0.6 0.3 seconds left on the clock, Chicago inbounded the ball to Brad Miller who did a super-quick catch and release. Miller’s shot at the buzzer went in and the Bulls celebrated what appeared to be a game-winning shot. The entire United Center was in a frenzy thinking the Bulls had just won the game. That was until the refs intervened and overturned the play. Here’s video of Brad Miller’s buzzer beater against the Nuggets:
Here’s my take on the event, and it probably won’t be popular with anyone outside of Bulls fans. I think there comes a point where instant replay intervenes too much with the judgment of the naked eye. Replay of this play to me didn’t produce overwhelmingly conclusive evidence that Miller released the shot after the buzzer. When it comes to a millisecond as it did here, I think you have to give it to the guy. In the same way that the tie goes to the runner in baseball, if there’s a tie like this and the guy actually made the shot, I think you have to give it to him.
Now if you want to complain about a guy having the opportunity to win the game with 0.6 0.3 seconds left, blame it on the rule that allows teams to advance the ball half the court simply by calling a timeout — now that’s a problem. But when there’s ties like this and it becomes a matter of hundredths of a second, you have to give it to the guy for doing the impossible — making that super tough, clutch shot. Much like the challenge calls in tennis, sometimes technology has its weaknesses (the tennis replays include the full diameter of the ball, not just the spot where it hit the surface); one hundredth of a second is too picky to overturn. If the stadium operator started the clock one hundredth of a second too early then it makes Miller’s shot one hundredth of a second after the buzzer. You know what I mean?
This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 and is filed under Basketball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
I do know what you mean — in fact, I was just telling my room-mate that they should be reviewing the point at when the clock starts too to make sure that it doesn’t start early.
did the NBA season start already? f’n right about how ridiculous it is that just by calling timeout you can
bring the ball up to midcourt. There should be a rule about how many TOs you can use in the last 2
mins of a game.
No point.
If the referees were going to take away Miller’s game winning shot because of a millisecond, then they should have to go back to where the bulls called time out, review how much time was left, and also review when the clocke started during the inbounds play.
This was a classic misuse of technology. The above contributors are correct that if they are going to try and take things down to a millisecond, then they should review the timeout as well.
I have always opposed the rule that you can move the ball to midcourt on an out of bounds play just by calling a timeout. It was put in to keep suspense and commerical timeouts at a maximum.