On Sunday, after dinner, I called my mother in Indiana. She was the one who told me about the game. Orlando against Cleveland. She wanted me to explain it.
So I explained what RTBF reports. Orlando leads by thirteen, second quarter. James Harden throws a pass that is too soft, and Noah Penda intercepts it. Four dribbles, a drive into the paint, a dunk before Cleveland gets back. The ball hits his face before it has gone through the hoop, comes out, goes back in. The referees cancel the two points.
She asked: but why? I read her the rule RTBF quotes: interference when a player stops the ball from passing fully through the hoop, or touches it in the cylinder above. The ball hadn’t finished going through when it met his face. At real speed you can’t see anything; in slow motion it’s fairly clear. That’s all.
In 2000, in Charleroi, in the hall with the badminton lines, I saw a basket nobody ever managed to count. Nobody had a replay. We looked at the referee, he looked at the scorer’s table, and the table looked at its bowl of coffee. The game went on. Here, I learned that what you can’t see at real speed is often settled at the club bar.
Let me tell you: I came for one year. I had never seen a player block himself. Twenty-six years of basketball here and over there, and it’s the NBA that teaches me.
Then my mother asked her question, the same as always: did anyone play defence? I said Cleveland’s defence hadn’t got back yet. Nobody was there.
She thought about it. She said: so the only one who defended was him. See?
It’s true, we checked: RTBF Sport · Basket.
