CLEVELAND, Ohio — With less than a minute remaining and the shot clock ticking down in a tight, two-possession game, Kings guard Zach LaVine took a pass from teammate Keon Ellis and drove to the basket for an uncontested game-sealing layup.
Only it shouldn’t have counted.
Numerous in-arena replays showed that LaVine’s basket came after the expiration of the shot clock and even though the Cavs repeatedly made the universal signal that it shouldn’t have been good, the night’s three-man officiating crew — Courtney Kirkland, Eric Dalen and Brandon Schwab — chose not to stop the game for a review.
“We made a mistake,” Kirkland, Sunday’s crew chief, said afterward. “During live action we thought that LaVine released the ball prior to the expiration of the shot clock. If we were going to review, we would have had to review it before the ball was legally touched on the floor during the throw in, right after the made basket.”
Cavs swingman Max Strus inbounded the ball quickly. By then, it was too late.
“They said they couldn’t review it,” Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson explained. “I guess they missed it. Too bad. I don’t know. We make errors. We make mistakes. They make mistakes. They’re not perfect, so I’m not gonna make a big deal out of it. That’s not why we lost the game.”
One player echoed Atkinson’s sentiment, telling cleveland.com the game shouldn’t have come down to that non-review — despite it being a critical moment, where a stop and made shot at the other end could’ve made it a pressure-packed one-possession game.
Instead, the Cavs never got closer than five — the margin before LaVine’s late-game drive — and they squandered their first chance at clinching the Eastern Conference’s No. 1 seed with a 120-113 setback.
“I didn’t think our energy level was as high as I thought it would be, considering we have the first seed at stake” Atkinson said pointedly Sunday night. “Their energy and intensity level was higher. I think we did pick it up a bit, but a little surprised we weren’t more on point. We made a lot of mistakes, quite honestly, defensively.”
See, the refs weren’t the only ones who screwed up Sunday.
LaVine scored a game-high 37 points on 15 of 21 shooting and 7 of 11 from 3-point range. DeMar DeRozan (28 points) and Domantas Sabonis (27) also eclipsed the 20-point threshold, as Sacramento shot 53.7% from the field.
“Can’t allow their three best players to go for 30,” said Cavs star Donovan Mitchell, who shook off a nasty-looking ankle injury and finished the game. “Just little details like that. Box outs, coverages, turnovers. They had 37 points off of our turnovers. It’s really self-inflicted stuff.”
Even with the troubling loss, Cleveland’s magic number in the East remains one. It is two games back in the loss column of league-best Oklahoma City for the top spot overall.
“We just have to be better,” Mitchell said. “I know it’s the same message on repeat, but obviously I’d rather have this happen now than in about three weeks. So, we learn from things like these. We’ll watch the film, and we’ll get better.”
