During a game against the Spurs James Harden slammed a dunk down on while being on the fast break, that dunk was not counted. The Rockets were hoping that wouldn’t need to file a protect but were unfortunately unable to get the officials to come up with a solution quick enough.
The protect will outline the fact that James Harden was able to breakaway and get the dunk with 7:50 seconds left on the clock, that would of most likely given the Rockets the one up they needed to take away the game. They feel it wasn’t necessary for the officials to need to decide whether bucket would count or not.
Chief James Capers responded to the non counted bucket and told reporters this happened because they were unsure if it would count as “basket interference”.
“As to could the play have been reviewed, it is a reviewable matter, but you have a window of 30 seconds to challenge the play during that timeout that he had, and while they were protesting the call, trying to get clarification of it, that window passed. So therefore, it elapsed, and they were not able to do it.” said the official.
Although the officials say there was challenge from the coach, coach Mike D’Antoni says he challenge part of the call that involved the refs stating that the ball hit James Harden it went back up.