Donovan Mitchell did, indeed, jump the gun.
The NBA concluded in its Last Two Minutes (L2M) Report that officials failed to properly whistle Mitchell for a lane violation when he rebounded his own missed free throw with the Cavaliers down one on the game’s final possession.
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Instead of a whistle — which would have given the Nets possession of the ball up one with only seconds left on the clock — Mitchell attempted to put-back his own miss. A group of Nets denied him at the rim, but the ball slipped away into Caris LeVert’s hands.
LeVert found Cavs guard Isaac Okoro in the corner for a game-winning three.
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“I didn’t look at it real closely, but it’s pretty interesting, the way it came off, a lot of times, it doesn’t get back to the shooter without it being a violation,” Nets head coach Jacque Vaughn said after the loss. “So I’ll take a quick look at it when I get back in there, but it’ll be interesting to see.”
Donovan Mitchell, seen here driving to the basket against Nic Claxton, should have been whistled for a lane violation before Cavs’ game-winning shot. (Noah K. Murray/AP)
The missed lane violation call was one of two officiating blunders highlighted in the L2M Report. The league also determined officials incorrectly called a foul on Nic Claxton when he indeed got all ball and only made “incidental contact” with LeVert’s hand on a drive to the rim at the 1:52 mark in the fourth quarter.
“If they call, it they call it,” Nets forward Royce O’Neale said postgame. “I stopped trying to be a ref and just play basketball.”
Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie gets into his fair share of arguments with officials but said the outcome of the game was hardly decided on one missed call. The Nets led by 10 midway through the fourth and held an eight-point lead with under three minutes left before the Cavs went on a 12-2 run to close the game.
“At the end of the day, listen: I’m as hard on the refs as anyone, but we had to get to that point,” he said. “That’s a bang, bang play, it’s not like he shoved somebody out of bounds or something crazy where we got super slighted. We had to have a cascade of events to even got there. So we gotta be accountable for that.”
The Nets have lost five in a row and look to snap their losing streak in Miami against the same Heat team that leapfrogged them in the standings on Thursday.