Vince Lombardi, the legendary NFL coach, once said, “football is a game of inches, and inches make the champion.” The same could be said of basketball.
If basketball is also a game of inches, Saturday’s contest between the Los Angeles Lakers and Minnesota Timberwolves may have been a game of micrometers.
Near the end of the contest, with the Lakers down by three points, they appeared to get a game-tying 3-pointer from LeBron James. But the shot was ruled a 2-pointer live, and a subsequent review confirmed that call. James protested, but L.A. ended up losing 108-106.
Throughout X, formerly Twitter, fans dissected that shot and the resulting officiating decision, and they had a range of reactions.