The NBA appeared to be doing some mental gymnastics with their decision on the New York Knicks’ official game protest.
The league announced Wednesday that they had denied the Knicks’ protest over the ending of their Feb. 12 loss to the Houston Rockets. The Knicks had made the filing after Jalen Brunson got called for a phantom foul as time expired that gave the Rockets the game-winning free throws (video here).
In their statement, the NBA admitted that there was “an error in judgment” by the game officials. However, they added that the standard for a successful protest was that a team had to demonstrate “a misapplication of the playing rules” rather than a mere error in judgment. The Knicks did not meet that criteria, and their protest was thus denied.
The following has been released by the NBA. pic.twitter.com/zdF29Swrva
— NBA Communications (@NBAPR) February 28, 2024
In all likelihood, the NBA doesn’t want to open up a whole can of worms by setting a precedent that subjective calls can successfully get protested. But even so, there doesn’t seem to be much use for the protest as a tool if it cannot rectify even a call as blatantly bad as that one (which the crew admitted just minutes later that they had missed).
On the bright side for the Knicks though, the laws of karmic justice ended up smiling down on them. Earlier this week, they found themselves on the other end of another horrific game-swinging referee controversy.
