More unnecessary guessing...

Here we go again: http://scores.espn.go.com/nba/recap?gameId=280505008.

For the record, I do not care about the outcome of the NBA 2nd round playoff series between the Pistons and the Magic. Furthermore, I do not believe that, in this case, the controversial play "decided" the outcome. And to their credit, the Magic have taken the high road, by publicly stating that the play in question was not the reason they lost. And I absolutely agree, a 3 pointer that may or may not have happened at the end of the 3rd quarter is not the deciding factor in a game that was decided by 7 points.

And yet, I am continually and consistently frustrated with the way professional sports leagues almost willfully subject themselves to missing calls that they just shouldn't have to miss. For a quick recap in case you decided not to read through the whole article, on the last play of the 3rd quarter, with the Pistons in possession of the ball, the clock froze at 4.8 seconds. The play continued on, and the Pistons hit a 3 that replays indicated would have occurred after the buzzer had the clock continued to run. Unfortunately, however, NBA rules do not allow the referees to use those such replays in that situation, and so they were forced to estimate where the clock should have been, and continue on. They ruled the basket good, and in fact left half a second on the clock.

Why in the world aren't officials allowed to use replay to get the time right in a situation like that? It's just incomprehensible to me. This isn't a matter of replay disrupting the flow of the game. In this case, the game was disrupted for several minutes anyhow to come to what appears to be the wrong decision. And anytime there's a clock malfunction at any point of a game, there's going to be a stoppage to get things settled properly. Why not give officials the tools to use that stoppage to actually set things right?

The NBA dodged a bullet here, in my opinion. What happened last night could easily have happened at the end of the 4th quarter with a shot that would have been a deciding factor in the game. Here's hoping this kind of near miss spurs the league onto some action. There's just no reason with the technology currently available that we should be guessing on this sort of thing anymore.