The fallout from the egregious no-call in the final second of Saturday’s game between the Los Angeles Lakers game and the Boston Celtics shows no sign of ending, with the official NBA Referees Twitter account admitting to the error on Sunday.
“Like everyone else, referees make mistakes,” the union wrote. “We made one at the end of last night’s game and that is gut-wrenching for us.
“This play will weigh heavily and cause sleepless nights as we strive to be the best referees we can be.”
Lakers star LeBron James was incensed after the officials missed a clear foul by Jayson Tatum as he went for a game-winning layup, with the Celtics eventually coming out on top in overtime.
To make matters worse, LA guard Patrick Beverley then received a technical foul after taking a photographer’s camera to show the officials a photo of the missed call.
Later on Saturday, Lakers guard Dennis Schröder took to Instagram to call for the referees to “start getting fined for their mistakes.”
“They also give technical fouls to people who are reacting to their mistakes,” the German guard wrote in a now expired Instagram story accompanied by a photo of the foul.
“The replay center should also use replay to get calls right on an especially important play like the OBVIOUS foul on LeBron at the end of the game.
“This needs to stop. We need every win we can get in this league to reach our goals! To lose 3-5 games this season off of the referee’s mistakes is really hard.”
Teams can use their coach’s challenge to review in-game incidents if they feel the wrong decision has been made, but that wasn’t possible in this instance as the referee’s hadn’t actually made a call.
James was still smarting from the incident on Sunday, posting a video to his Instagram story with the caption “Good block Jayson Tatum,” tagging the Celtics star along with a series of sarcastic emojis.
James has been on a tear recently as he chases the NBA’s all-time scoring record, now sitting just 117 points from breaking Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s total of 38,387. (CNN)