The Hawks had a legitimate beef in their game against the Cavs Wednesday night. For some reason the shot-clock was not re-set late in the game after the Cavs missed a shot, resulting in a rushed Atlanta possession that they botched. Clearly the fact that Atlanta had to rush when it thought it had time contributed to the poor possession. How the shot clock was not re-set is a mystery, but it sure seems like some home cooking. ESPN's Chris Sheridan called it an "egregious" mistake, and though it doesn't rank with poverty and world hunger, it was bad.
That being said, nobody knows what would have changed had the clock been used properly. Atlanta still might have lost, and Anderson Varejao still might have made his first career three and LeBron James still might have been off-the-charts incredible on his birthday.
But … the Hawks had a legitimate gripe and beef. It was an amateurish mistake.
Hi Pat, I agree that the Hawks had a right to be angry about the shot clock mishap, but I think that they handled the situation poorly. I've watched just about every Cavs game the last few years and I've seen this happen on at least a few other occasions. Ususally, the team with the ball that notices the problem will either stop dribbling and point out the problem to the officials, call a time out and then point it out, or just let it expire and then notify the officials of the problem. Atlanta didn't do any of the above. They only called timeout and argued about it AFTER the ball was stolen and the Cavs scored, which makes me wonder if they really were even aware of the problem before the steal. Because the steal happened prior to the shot clock going off and the play continued and the Cavs scored, I don't think that there's anything the officials could do at that point to rectify the situation. Since play never stopped, how could they at that point take points off the board from the Cavs and then do a do-over? If Atlanta noticed the problem before the steal, they should have just let the clock run out and then pointed out the problem. The officials then could have confirmed the problem (especially since there was less than 2 min left and they can review anything at that point) and then reset the game and shot clock and started over again with Atlanta taking the ball out on the side.