The NBA’s Last Two Minute Report released on Thursday states that LeBron James‘ big block on Victor Oladipo in the final seconds of Game 5 should have been called goaltending.
The officials did not see that the ball hit the backboard before James made contact with it, which is an automatic goaltend.
As ESPN‘s Rachel Nichols points out, the report also notes other significant mistakes in crunch time:
The NBA’s last-two-minutes report is out, and it says, indeed, that last night the Cavs should have retained the ball with 27.6 seconds to go (refs mistook who last touched it before it went out). And, indeed, LeBron’s block on Oladipo with 5 seconds to go was actually a goaltend pic.twitter.com/cAoGFqNIAJ
— Rachel Nichols (@Rachel__Nichols) April 26, 2018
Cleveland went on to win the game on LeBron’s miraculous buzzer-beater three, taking a 3-2 series lead.
Game 6 is Friday night at 8pm ET in Indiana.
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