Luka Doncic has responded to what Mark Cuban called the “worst officiating non-call mistake possibly in the history of the NBA”.
The incident occurred when the referees gave Golden State the ball under their own basket, which led to an uncontested dunk due to Dallas thinking it was their ball coming out of the timeout.
“It was kind of weird, you know,” Doncic said. “When we come out of the timeout, there’s another ref right down at the sidelines probably thinking it’s Dallas ball… They could’ve waited because there was a referee all the way on our side.”
Jason Kidd also addressed the matter.
“There was a lot of confusion,” he said. “A lot of people were out of position. The court was split. We’re on one side and the Warriors were on the other. And you have a referee on the baseline, Mike (Smith) was on the baseline, so I would assume Mike thought it was our ball, too. If there’s confusion, it’s easy to just come in and blow the whistle and get us re-started.
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“Because there was confusion, understanding that it was our ball. The referee pointed toward our bench, but that was a signal of the timeout. But there was confusion on the play before it even started with who’s ball it was because he pointed to us first and then changed it. And it went to a timeout and he pointed to us. There were quite a few people out of position on that play. It’s correctable. But you first have to admit there was a mistake.”
To make matters worse, Dallas went on to lose the game by two points, albeit on a last-second three that went in once the game had already been decided.
The Mavericks will now formally protest the outcome of the game.