SAN ANTONIO – Game 2 of the Western Conference semifinal series between the San Antonio Spurs and Oklahoma City Thunder on Monday night provided possibly the best game to date in the NBA playoffs, with the Thunder evening the series at a game apiece after a 98-97 win. But Tuesday’s main talking point was the wild final 13.5 seconds of the game that saw a plethora of miscues, missed calls and chances for both teams to ice the game.
It was a memorable sequence for a variety of reasons – including five incorrect non-calls as judged by the NBA’s officiating report. After the court cleared and the players returned to their locker rooms, those involved in the game’s frantic finale recounted their role in the insane last-second scramble.
13.5 seconds left
Spurs forward LaMarcus Aldridge had just pulled San Antonio within one, 98-97, with three made free throws. The Thunder returned to the court after calling its final timeout, with Coach Billy Donovan assigning Dion Waiters to inbound the ball on the sideline.
As referee Marc Davis handed Waiters the ball and began counting off five seconds, Waiters knew he had to get the ball inbounds.
“Man, to be honest with you, I was caught up in the game,” Waiters said. “I don’t really know what happened, to be honest with you. My whole thing was trying to get the ball in there with no timeouts.”
As Waiters moved perilously close to committing a five-second infraction, he appeared to panic. First, he used his arm to push away Manu Ginobili, who was defending him on the play, to create enough space to inbound the ball.
“I was trying to rip the ball, and he kind of created room with his elbow,” Ginobili said. “But things happen. It’s a very awkward play, doesn’t happen very often, so I guess they didn’t see it.”
Though Ginobili thought the elbow should have warranted a foul call, he wasn’t even sure what kind of violation it was.
Crew chief Ken Mauer told a pool reporter after Monday’s game that Waiters had committed an offensive foul on the play, and the ball should have been given to San Antonio. But there was nothing, no whistle at all.
“On the floor we did not see a foul on the play,” Mauer said. “However, upon review we realize and we agree we should have [called] an offensive foul on the play. It’s a play we’ve never seen before, ever. We should have had an offensive foul on the play.”
Waiters then got away with a second violation – he jumped in the air to make the pass, which is illegal.
Waiters contended Ginobili had committed his own violation: stepping over the out-of-bounds line.
“I didn’t really get a look at it,” Waiters said. “But hopefully they’re going to look at it and they’ll see he stepped out and it should’ve been a tech[nical foul], too, but it’s not up to me.”
It was unclear whether Ginobili stepped over the line. (He appeared to step on it, which is not a violation, but not over it, which is.) It’s also unclear if Ginobili gave Waiters enough room to inbound the ball, a judgement call the referees could have made. Instead, they called nothing and the game’s final play continued to devolve into beautiful chaos.
12.9 seconds left
A leaping Waiters eventually lobbed the ball in to teammate Kevin Durant at center court. A half-second before the ball was touched, the clock began to roll, another odd oversight that could have impacted the outcome. Guarded by Spurs guard Danny Green, Durant leaped for the pass but was unable to corral it.
“I was trying to see where [Durant] was going. I tried to deny. [Then] I thought maybe [Waiters] would call time out, and I was just at that one point, once you deny, I was trying to play safety,” Green said. “I could see where [Waiters] was looking, and I thought maybe we would’ve got a call, but we didn’t. But he threw it up, and I just went to try to go get it.”
As Durant fell to the ground, it appeared Green may have fouled him as the Spurs defender poked the ball away. But after Green realized there was no call against him, he pressed his advantage.
10 seconds left
Two people stood in front of Green – Thunder center Steven Adams and Spurs guard Patty Mills. Green tried to loop the ball over Adams’s head to Mills, but his pass was long, forcing Mills nearly under the basket to catch it. On top of that, Green missed Ginobili streaking past him on his right. If he had spotted him, it would have resulted in a simple 2-on-1 and a likely layup for the Spurs.
“I saw Adams in front of me. I didn’t know if they called [a foul on me] or not, but I wanted to make sure I got the ball first,” Green said. “But I saw Adams in front of me, I saw Patty, and [Adams] is a big body so I just tried to throw it over top of him. It was a lofty pass, it wasn’t a good one, and it took some time to get there, but I didn’t have a chance to see who was to the right of me, and it was Manu.”
Eight seconds left
After Mills wound up with the ball under the basket, he swung it over to Ginobili, who had run past Green and back into the play. From there, Ginobili dribbled into the lane, where Adams – after forcing the bad Green pass and then making Mills kick it out to Ginobili – was there again, standing between Ginobili and the basket.
“We were just trying to inbound it and then it was just a scramble, mate,” Adams, a native of New Zealand, said. “I just tried to do the best I could… . We got lucky. We got really lucky.”
Options limited, Ginobili flipped a pass over his head right to Mills, who had hustled to the corner, for what appeared to be a wide-open three-pointer to put the Spurs ahead.
“[Patty] threw it to me, and I didn’t think I had an open look, so I just tried to bait towards the middle to let Patty get to the corner,” Ginobili said.
But Adams, making yet another spectacular defensive play, raced across the court, leaped in the air and contested Mills’s shot – causing it to fall well short of the hoop.
“I don’t know, man,” Adams said when asked if he affected Mills’s shot. “I saw the pass and did my best to contest it. I don’t know if I influenced his shot, but I’ll take it.”
Three seconds left
The true insanity begins here.
As Mills’s shot fell short, a battle broke out beneath the basket, with players from both teams crashing down to get their hands on the ball. Thunder forward Serge Ibaka found himself between the Spurs’ Kawhi Leonard and Aldridge, and he was doing whatever he could to keep either one of them from grabbing a loose ball for a potential game-winning putback.
“I knew it was very important, so I got up against Leonard,” Ibaka recounted. “I had to choose which one and so I bumped him a little bit, and when I saw Leonard had the ball, I tried to tip the ball and go Aldridge’s way.”
What Ibaka actually did was grab Aldridge’s jersey and nearly rip it off his body. He never let go, ensuring Aldridge never had a real chance at a game-winning basket. The buzzer sounded. The game ended. And those on the court were left to attempt to reconstruct what the heck had just happened.
“I thought I had the ball,” Aldridge said. “I thought [Ibaka] had a good chunk of my jersey. I thought there were some things happening that maybe shouldn’t have happened. But it’s over now. You can’t keep harping on it.”
“Those are the kinds of plays, you have to make them nasty,” Ibaka said. “You have to make them nasty, to do whatever it takes to get a win.”
On top of it all, after barreling past Mills and into the crowd while contesting the three-point attempt, Adams had his arm held by a fan as he tried to climb back onto the court and get back into the action.
In fairness, it appeared a woman Adams ran over while falling out of bounds was simply trying to get back on her own feet. Still, it served as a fitting final moment to an insane final 13.5 seconds of Game 2.
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