The Milwaukee Bucks picked up a critical victory on Monday over the Houston Rockets, but did so in controversial fashion. Entering the game with a 4-9 record, Milwaukee needs every win it can get, and with 3.2 seconds left on the clock, Damian Lillard delivered by making a driving layup that put the Bucks up 101-100. That wound up being the clincher as the Bucks won by that score.
The problem? Milwaukee never should have had possession of the ball in the closing seconds.
Let's turn back the clock. With around 22 seconds remaining, Giannis Antetokounmpo blocked an Alperen Sengun shot that would have put Houston up by three. Brook Lopez secured the rebound and quickly passed the ball back to Antetokounmpo with Antetokounmpo's left foot still visibly on the baseline.
If you freeze the video with exactly 20 seconds left on the clock, you'll not only see Antetokounmpo step out of bounds, but the official who is meant to be monitoring the baseline looking up court. Sure enough, the Last Two Minute Report released by the NBA on Tuesday confirmed that Antetokounmpo should indeed have been called out of bounds, giving the ball back to Houston.
The game wouldn't have explicitly ended had the call been made correctly. Houston would have gotten the ball back with around 20 seconds remaining, and the game would have turned into a free-throw contest at that point. Instead, the ball was pushed ahead to Lillard for what proved to be the winning shot.
Had the play been called correctly, Houston would have been heavily favored, but a missed free throw or a 3-pointer from the Bucks could have closed the gap and potentially forced overtime.
Still, this is a disheartening loss for the Rockets on a number of levels. This wasn't a subjective missed call like a foul would be. Antetokounmpo stepped on the line. It's visually evident and was simply missed. The Rockets entered the game at 10-4, and a win would have taken them above the 9-4 Los Angeles Lakers for the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference early in the season. Seeds in November don't mean much, but every win counts in the West.
Last season, for instance, the difference between the No. 1 and No. 3 seeds as well as the No. 4 and No. 5 seeds was only a single win. The Suns made the playoffs at 49 wins while the Pelicans, who also won 49, were forced to participate in the Play-In Tournament because of a tiebreaker, and another tiebreaker between the Sacramento Kings and Golden State Warriors gave Sacramento home-court advantage in their Play-In matchup.
Losing a game anywhere on the schedule due to such an egregious officiating error can have enormous consequences down the line, and now, Houston can only hope it manages to avoid any more of them over the remaining 67 games on its schedule.