King Kaufman's Sports Daily
Once more with absurdity: In an NBA do-over, the Heat won't lose Shaq to fouls in overtime vs. the Hawks. But they still can't use him.
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March 4, 2008 | The NBA has set up the guidelines for the Atlanta Hawks and Miami Heat to replay the last 51.9 seconds of their Dec. 19 game Saturday night. The guidelines are: Do whatever you want.
The Hawks won that game 117-111, putting it away after Heat center Shaquille O'Neal fouled out with 51 seconds left in overtime and the Hawks up by one. An item in the notes at the end of the Associated Press story on the game read, "The first postgame statistics showed O'Neal with only five fouls, prompting [Heat coach Pat] Riley to suggest he would protest the game. A review of the play-by-play sheet showed one of O'Neal’s fouls was credited to [Udonis] Haslem, and the error was corrected."
Except it wasn't. Riley did protest the game, and it turned out that the stat sheet was right. The mistake had been made when the scoring table credited a Haslem foul in the fourth quarter to O'Neal.
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Commissioner David Stern fined the Hawks $50,000 -- about the price of a postgame spread -- for letting the error happen and ordered the game replayed from the point of the mistake. Al Horford made two free throws after O'Neal's foul, giving Atlanta a 114-111 lead, so the Heat will inbound the ball under their own basket from there. Cool thing to look at for the next few days on NBA.com: An 11-week-old box score hung up at "0:51 1st OT," with the Hawks leading 114-111.
So the great news for the Heat is that O'Neal can come back into the game. The problem is the Heat traded Shaq to the Phoenix Suns on Feb. 6. That's where the NBA's do-whatever edict comes in.
The league office announced Monday that the teams can use players acquired since the game in question to replace those who have been sent away. So Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks, who were traded for O'Neal, can play for the Heat. The Hawks can play their new point guard, Mike Bibby, picked up in a trade Feb. 16.
What's the point of this exercise? The problem the NBA is trying to solve is that the Heat unfairly had to play the last 51.9 seconds without Shaquille O'Neal. So it orders a do-over -- so the Heat can play the last 51.9 seconds without Shaquille O'Neal. What?