[ad_1]
The New York Knicks are filing a protest to contest Monday’s 105-103 loss to the Houston Rockets, a league source confirmed Tuesday.
With the score tied at 103, Rockets guard Aaron Holiday hit a prayer 3-pointer with 0.3 seconds left. Referee Jacyn Goble called a foul on Knicks guard Jalen Brunson for colliding with the shooter. Holiday connected on 2 of 3 free throw attempts to win the game for Houston.
After the final buzzer, crew chief Ed Malloy admitted in an interview that Brunson made “incidental contact” and that the play should not have been called a foul. If the whistle hadn’t blown, the Knicks and Rockets would have gone to overtime tied at 103.
“After viewing during a post-game review, the offensive player was able to return to a normal playing position on the court,” Malloy said in the interview with a pool reporter. “The contact, which occurred after releasing the ball, is therefore incidental and marginal to the shot attempt and should not have been called.”
The Knicks’ perspective
The objective would be to continue the game. If the Knicks win the protest, New York and Houston would meet again to play a five-minute overtime.
Rumors that the Knicks were considering a protest began as soon as the final buzzer sounded Monday in Houston. Of course, winning a protest requires more than simply admitting an incorrect call, even when that call decides the final outcome.
A team must prove that the referees misapplied a rule, which means that for the Knicks to have a chance here, they have to prove that Monday’s referees made a mistake in more than just conventional ways.
New York was able to compare the last play of regulation to the last play of the first half, when a similar play occurred. In this case, Knicks guard Donte DiVincenzo rose to hit a deep 3-pointer just before the buzzer sounded. When Holiday, who rushed toward him, slashed his leg, the referees called a three-shot foul.
But they had to go to the monitor to check if there was time on the clock when the foul occurred. Once they established there was a split second left, the Rockets contested the foul. Houston not only won the challenge, eliminating the foul on Holiday, but also got the officials to change the call to a foul on DiVincenzo, who stuck out his leg on the play and knocked Holiday down.
The Knicks could argue that the play at the end of the game wasn’t much different than DiVincenzo’s. Watch the replay of Brunson fouling Holiday closely and you can see Holiday slightly kicking his leg. But the kick on the fourth-quarter play was much more subtle than DiVincenzo’s. And even if the Knicks demonstrated an inconsistency between those two plays, that wouldn’t necessarily count as a misapplication of the rules.
There’s a reason teams rarely file protests. And when they do, there’s a reason they rarely win. It is not enough to demonstrate a failed decision. And it won’t be easy for the Knicks to prove beyond that here. — Fred Katz, Knicks writer
What is the Rockets’ position on this matter?
It seems like the Rockets aren’t particularly worried about a potential Knicks protest. For one thing, the odds of a protest being successful are extremely low, dating back to the 2007-08 regular season, when the last one was granted.
Second, Houston went through a similar process in December 2019, filing a protest over a missed James Harden dunk in a double-overtime loss to the San Antonio Spurs. Although James Capers, the official in charge that day, admitted fault after the game, the league still denied the Rockets’ claim after conducting its investigation.
The process of filing a protest is arduous, comparable to lengthy legal proceedings, in addition to the required $10,000 protest fee. Of course, the financial aspect sounds like a drop in the bucket for a billionaire, but the amount of work required to carry out the procedures might not be worth it, especially if the odds are historically stacked against the protesting team. — Kelly Iko, Rockets writer
Required reading
(Jalen Brunson Photo: Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)