You’re going to find this hard to believe, I know. But somehow, they played professional basketball games before the evening of Tuesday, Oct. 17, 2017.
Somehow, the NBA had become a genuine global phenomenon in the 69 years before that night, when the NBA’s 70th season began with the defending-champion Warriors dropping a 122-121 nail-biter to the Rockets in Oakland, and the defending runner-up Cavaliers squeaking past old fried Kyrie Irving and the Celtics, 102-99, in Cleveland.
Maybe you were otherwise occupied that night, so you missed the revolution. The Yankees were playing the Astros in Game 4 of the 2017 ALCS that night, after all, and it was a rollicking celebration at Yankee Stadium, the Yankees spotting the Astros a 4-0 lead and then roaring back to win 6-4 thanks to a couple of clutch eighth-inning doubles by Aaron Judge and Gary Sanchez. This was before we realized it was a civic duty to loathe the Astros, but the 48,804 filled the Bronx sky with thunder that night anyway.
If you were a Knicks fan, maybe you were fully engaged in getting ready for the next night’s season opener in Oklahoma City, where the Knicks would greet the recently departed Carmelo Anthony as an ex-teammate for the first time (and it might’ve been the last day of that 29-53 tire fire of a season you actually paid attention to).
In any event, the world likely changed without you.
Because that was the night the NBA officially began playing its games under the watchful eye of the Last Two Minute Report, also cozily known as L2M. Remember when Y2K kept people up at night for years wondering if the world would cease to function at 12:01 on Jan. 1, 2000 … and then it just kind of happened? L2M is in many ways the exact opposite of Y2K. It came quietly, almost invisibly. And essentially changed the sport forever.
And not for the better, either.
“I don’t like it, and I felt that way when I was coaching, too,” TNT analyst Stan Van Gundy told The Post’s Stefan Bondy a few days ago. “It pissed me off as a coach. I don’t want to know that you think your guys made mistakes at the end of a game. It doesn’t do me any good. I don’t know why they do it.”
Actually he does — we all do — because the NBA is very clear about the why of L2M.
“In the name of transparency,” Van Gundy said, “but I don’t think it makes a fan base feel any better. We go on record on all this officiating stuff, but officials make mistakes. Guess what? Players make mistakes. Coaches make mistakes.”
The L2M has become weaponized during these playoffs in a way it never has before. The Knicks were primed for all of this by two separate instances in the regular season: the game they lost in Houston because an official called a foul at the buzzer on Jalen Brunson the league admitted later was not a foul, and a game they won at the Garden against Detroit because of a chaotic finish in which the Pistons had about 31 legit beefs in the final second, all of which the league happily copped to.
Of course, all that did was — Van Gundy’s words — piss everyone off.
Because nothing comes of these sessions in the public confessional. Games aren’t overturned. And look, they shouldn’t be. Refs, officials, umpires, they blow calls all the time, and some of them are egregious. Ask Armando Galarraga. Ask fans of the Seton Hall Pirates. Ask the fair citizenry of the city of St. Louis.
Bad calls happen. You rage for a while. Then you either get past it or get night sweats when you see that Angel Hernandez or Jacyn Goble is working the game you’re watching.
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“What it leads to,” Van Gundy said, “is too much where instead of celebrating the incredible finishes to games and the incredible plays that were made we’re talking about how bad the officiating was.”
So Philadelphia is given the useless consolation prize that the refs blew some calls at the end of Game 2 of that series. The Knicks get the same at the end of Game 5. The Pacers get the same after hearing there shouldn’t have been a kicked ball at the end of Game 1.
“I get it, they made mistakes in both [76ers-Knicks] games. It evened out by the end of the series,” Van Gundy said before the Knicks’ Game 2 win in which Rick Carlisle vented more of his frustrations with the referees. “We should be talking about Brunson’s play, [Tyrese] Maxey’s shots, [Donte] DiVincenzo’s shots. Those are incredible, iconic-type plays. Instead all anyone wants to talk about is the refs. It’s a shame.”
Amen.
