Adarq.org

Follow along! By my count, there were two other potential fouls even before Waiters elbowed Ginobili. 1) Ginobili stepped on, maybe even over the line while guarding the inbounds. This is fairly common, but Ginobili’s encroachment was more egregious than most. The refs could have stopped play there and whistled a delay-of-game foul on the Spurs. 2) Meanwhile, Kawhi Leonard grabbed a handful of Russell Westbrook’s jersey. Again, usually uncalled, but it could have been an away-from-the-play foul, which would have meant a free throw and the ball for OKC.

3) Waiters’s contact with Ginobili. So far, the only one the refs admitted they missed, and probably—though not definitely—the most egregious blown call of the sequence.

4) When Waiters did finally inbound, he jumped before throwing the ball. You can’t do that! It’s a throw-in violation, and if called would have been Spurs ball.

Bonus clock error!) Watch the inbound pass again—the clock starts while Waiters’s pass is at the top of its arc to Kevin Durant. It shouldn’t have. The clock starts when the ball is first touched, and six-tenths of a second rolled off before Durant got a hand on the ball. This is a minor thing, and almost always goes unnoticed, but could have been a reset and we would have gotten to do this all over again.

5) Danny Green ripped away Durant’s arm, stopping him from corralling the inbound pass. Loose-ball foul, two OKC free throws? Whatever, this game was clearly being played under Calvinball rules by this point.

6) As Patty Mills missed a three, Steven Adams’s momentum carried him out of bounds, where a fan in the front row grabbed his arm and hindered him from getting back into the play. Fan interference is a real, if rarely called violation, and would have resulted in a dead ball with OKC possession.

7) Serge Ibaka mauled LaMarcus Aldridge in the scrum for the rebound. Loose-ball foul, two free throws, whatever—at this point, whistles had been swallowed, pooped out, and were halfway to the sewage treatment plant.