Warriors-Mavericks confusing third-quarter play leads to Cuban protest, Kerr quip
DALLAS — Coach Steve Kerr had to do a double take after a timeout late in the third quarter of Wednesday’s pivotal Western Conference showdown.
All five Dallas players were on the opposite side of the court, allowing Kevon Looney to throw down an uncontested basket.
“It was my best ATO of the year,” Kerr said with a smile after the Warriors’ 127-125 win over the Dallas Mavericks. “It worked brilliantly just the way we got organized and confused them.”
But ask the other side and they’ll tell a much different series of events.
Mavericks owner Mark Cuban called that sequence the “worst officiating non-call mistake possibly in the history of the NBA.” He told ESPN he plans a protest of the high-stakes game, which gave the Warriors the head-to-head tiebreaker.
After a timeout, Jordan Poole emphatically urged the official to hand him the ball when he noticed Dallas on the opposite end of the floor. Poole threw an inbound pass to Looney who dunked it with 1:54 left in the third.
“I was just glad JP passed to me… I needed that to get to my double-double,” said Looney, who finished with 12 points and 12 rebounds.
Looney was trying to corral a rebound on the preceding play when the ball went out of bounds off of Mavericks guard Justin Holiday. Dallas then called a timeout.
Stephen Curry, who was on the bench, said he saw the referee point the Warriors’ direction for the ball before pointing toward the Mavericks’ bench for a timeout.
“Loon actually got a little confused at first because he didn’t hear the whistle for timeout, but after that it was pretty clear it was our ball,” Curry said. “Nobody from their side went down to get it… Probably the easiest two points Loon’s ever had and easiest assist JP has ever had.”
Kerr wasn’t sure what caused the confusion.
“I had to stop and think, ‘Wait, aren’t we — isn’t this our basket?’ Because I had drawn up a play for an… underneath baseline out-of-bounds. And when they were down at the other end, I had to stop and think, ‘Is this right?’” Kerr said. “I don’t know what happened.
“I thought it was pretty clear it was our ball and that’s why I was drawing up a play out of bounds on the baseline but they all lined up at the other end, I guess they assumed it was their ball.”
Cuban took to Twitter after the game to share his team’s side of the story. Cuban suggested the “ref called Mavs ball, the announcer announced it, then there was a timeout.”
“During the time out the official changed the call and never told us,” Cuban wrote. “Then when they saw us line up as if it were our ball, he just gave the ball to the warriors. Never said a word to us. They got an easy basketball. Crazy that it would matter in a 2 point game. Worst officiating non-call mistake possibly in the history of the NBA. All they had to do was tell us and they didn’t.”
Crew Chief Sean Wright put an end to the confusion after the game, saying it was always Warriors ball.
“Initially on the floor, the original signal was in fact Golden State ball as this can be seen on video,” he told a pool reporter. “There is a second signal but that signal is for a mandatory timeout that was due to the Mavs.”