Detroit's Tim Hardaway Jr. said he got fouled on the game's final play. The NBA agreed with him.
It didn't matter.
Referees missed Hardaway getting fouled while shooting a 3-pointer on the final play of Detroit's 94-93 loss to the Knicks in Game 4 of their Eastern Conference first-round series on Sunday. The NBA acknowledged the mistake shortly after the game, saying a foul should have been called on the Knicks' Josh Hart.
Had the foul been called, Hardaway would have been awarded three free throws with about 0.3 seconds left. Instead, the game ended on that play and Detroit was left fuming.
“You guys saw it,” Hardaway said after the game, speaking to reporters. “Blatant.”
The Knicks took a 3-1 lead in the series, with Game 5 in New York on Tuesday.
“During live play, it was judged that Josh Hart made a legal defensive play,” crew chief David Guthrie told a pool reporter after the game. “After postgame review, we observed that Hart makes body contact that is more than marginal to Hardaway Jr. and a foul should have been called.”
Hart didn't dispute that he made contact with Hardaway.
“Did I make contact with him? Yeah, I made contact with him," Hart said. “Was it legal? I don’t know. We’ll let the two-minute report say that.”
The NBA puts out a review of all calls in the final two minutes of games decided by three points or fewer, with those reports released the day after the game. But in this case, with a pool report requested, the NBA had Guthrie speak to a reporter and explain what happened.
Detroit argued to no avail after time expired. Pistons coach J.B. Bickerstaff was clearly angered and approached the officiating crew on the floor shortly after the final shot, but he had no mechanism to challenge the call. One, the Pistons had used their challenge earlier in the game and two, even if Bickerstaff still had the challenge it wouldn't have mattered — technically, no call was made, so he couldn't have challenged anyway.
“There’s contact on Tim Hardaway’s jump shot,” Bickerstaff said. "I don’t know any other way around it. There’s contact on his jump shot. The guy leaves his feet, he's at Timmy's mercy. I repeat, there’s contact on his jump shot.”
The Pistons had the ball with 11.1 seconds left, down by one. Cade Cunningham missed a jump shot with 7.4 seconds remaining and, after a scramble, the ball ended up in Hardaway's hands in the left corner.
Hardaway ball-faked to get Hart into the air, and Hart clearly made contact with the right side of Hardaway's body as he was in the act of shooting.
Knicks star Karl-Anthony Towns was asked for his view of the play after the game.
“What do you want me to say? View of what?” Towns said, smiling. “Going back to Madison Square Garden. Happy we got a win. You like that answer? Is that good?”
