On the final possession of the Dallas Mavericks' 100-98 win in Minnesota on Monday, the Timberwolves' Kevin Love had his shot blocked by Shawn Marion. That's what the official play-by-play shows, anyway. You might see it differently:
Wolves’ Kevin Love, Rick Adelman react to late-game no-call vs. Mavericks
After a controversial no-call and a loss, Wolves star Kevin Love and head coach Rick Adelman were not too pleased on Monday night.
Brace Hemmelgarn-USA TODAY Sport
If you prefer your commentary a thousand times more outraged and hilarious, I urge you to listen to Wolves announcer Alan Horton’s radio call immediately. Suffice to say, most in Minnesota agreed with Horton.
Predictably, Marion and the Timberwolves had diverging views on the play, via Jon Krawczynski of the Associated Press:
''Heh, heh. It was not a foul,'' Marion said.
The Timberwolves disagreed.
''He got fouled,'' Minnesota coach Rick Adelman said. ''I wonder what that would have been if (Dirk) Nowitzki, LeBron James, all the top players in the league - a guy reaches on a last-second shot like that, instead of challenging it. Maybe they don't understand that Kevin is one of the top five players in this league. You make that call. But they didn't.''
…
''I'm the type of person that if you see a foul, an obvious foul, you call it,'' Love said. ''And I thought that was pretty, pretty obvious. ... You look at the replay and it was obvious he got arm.''
By most accounts outside of Dallas, it should have been called a foul. NBA.com’s John Schuhmann offered a dissenting voice, stating that Marion swiped down on only Love’s hand while the ball was in it, which is legal.
The loss means Minnesota wasted a huge rally to come back from a 19-point first half deficit, including a 38-19 third quarter. It also kept the Wolves under .500 and put them three games behind the Mavericks for the No. 8 seed in the Western Conference playoff picture. To make matters worse, the postgame comments critical of the call on the final play might mean fines are coming for Love and Adelman.
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