You’ll excuse Stan Van Gundy if he believes the Magic oughta be tied at 1-1 with Detroit. Yahoo Sports’s Dan Wetzel can barely believe the trio of Steve Javie, Derrick Stafford and Joe Forte ” guesstimated because NBA rules prohibited them from consulting anything from the television to a sundial.”
The league is so sensitive to the idea of the stereotypically biased hometown clock operator that during the playoffs it flies in neutral officials (in this case Minnesota) to run the thing. The NBA thinks of everything. But it never thought to equip its refs with an old-school stopwatch, new-fangled timing device or the ability to consult a television replay when the shot or game clock inevitably breaks?
œOur instant replay rule does not account for this action, NBA spokesman Tim Frank said via email Monday night. œThere was not a trigger to permit use of the (television) screen to view clock.
League officials might want to write a œtrigger into the rules by Tuesday morning. The NBA was founded in 1946; this is the first time something like this happened?