After getting stunned at the buzzer by Andrew Wiggins and the Timberwolves Sunday night, some members of the Oklahoma City Thunder think the referees missed two obvious calls on the final play of the game.
The first boo boo by the referees might’ve been missing Wolves coach Tom Thibodeau trying to call a timeout after Carmelo Anthony’s 3-pointer to put the Thunder ahead with 4.7 seconds remaining.
In the video, it’s hard to see, but if you look closely it does look like Thibodeau signals for a timeout. Had the refs seen him do so, the Wolves would’ve been called for a technical foul and loss of possession. Thibodeau’s comments suggested that he knew they were out of timeouts.
“No question that was going on, I saw that,” Thunder head coach Billy Donovan said when asked if he saw Thibodeau try to call timeout, “but for me I let the NBA league office deal with that. That’s their problem.”
Instead, the ball was inbounded to Wiggins, who then raced up the center of the court thanks to a crushing screen by Karl-Anthony Towns on Paul George. OKC thought Towns’ screen was an illegal moving one, but it wasn’t called either.
That freed Wiggins for the winning three.
Westbrook on if he thought Towns set an illegal screen: "I think it is, just based on the conversation we had in the locker room." pic.twitter.com/9bTZfW9rIb
— Fred Katz (@FredKatz) October 23, 2017
“I haven’t seen it, but I think it is just based on a conversation we had in the locker room,” Russell Westbrook said of Towns’ screen, via The Oklahoman.
In the end, too bad, OKC. The Wolves got you this time.
