2007 NBA Game Protest Upheld

Looks like a bit of interesting basketball history has been made. The Hawks vs Heat game from December 19th 2007 is now officially under review. Commissioner David Stern decided that the Hawks staff were "grossly negligent" in committing a scoring error which may have resulted in costing the Heat the Overtime game.

According to NBA.com's report:

"The Heat protested the game because, with 51.9 seconds remaining in overtime, the Hawks' scoring table personnel incorrectly disqualified the Heat's Shaquille O'Neal – asserting that a foul committed by O'Neal was his sixth foul of the game, when in fact it was only his fifth. The error occurred because the Hawks’ Official Scorer mistakenly attributed to O’Neal a foul at 3:24 remaining in the fourth period that was actually called against the Heat’s Udonis Haslem."

So the reasoning is that without Shaq, the Heat were at a disadvantage. As of right now each team's record has been edited by 1 game. 1 Loss was taken away from Miami, and the 1 win taken was away from the Hawks. There will be a replay of the final 51.9 seconds of the game prior to the teams' next meeting on March 8, 2008. This will determine the winner of the game, and let's hope there's proper officiating and stat keeping this time.

It's definitely an interesting story that we havent' seen recently in the NBA or any sports of recent times. ESPN's Pardon the Interruption team made the excellent point that all of the gambling money awarded on this game is definitely something to consider now. According to NBA.com, this is also the first protest granted since 12/14/82, when then NBA commish Larry O'Brien granted a protest by San Antonio Spurs over a 137-132 Double OT loss. Read more at NBA.com.