| Re: fouling to win the game
This debate reminds me of something I saw a few years ago on ESPN Classic. It was an NBA Finals game in the late 70's, I think it was Celtics vs. Suns. The teams went to triple OT, and at the end of one of the OTs, the following happened:
The Celtics hit a shot to put them up 1. The Boston Garden timekeeper, long notorious for being slow to stop the clock when the Celtics were winning, let the clock continue to run despite the fact that there were clearly 1 or 2 seconds left in the game. Thinking the game was over, fans stormed onto the court and the Celtics players celebrated and ran back to their locker room.
During all this chaos, the referees were trying to get people off the court, explaining that there was 1 second left in the game. Finally, they got the court cleared, and they had to go back intot he locker rooms and get the teams to come back out. There was 1 second left on the clock.
So, the Suns had the ball and had to go the entire length of the court and throw up a prayer of a shot. However, the Suns coach realized a loophole in the playbook. If you had the ball and committed a technical foul, you got to inbound the ball at halfcourt. So, the Suns, knowing they had no timeouts, tried to call a timeout to purposely give themselves a technical foul. The Celtics hit the free throw to put them up by 2, but the Suns got to inbound the ball at midcourt.
They pass it in, a player for the Suns catches it, turns around and quickly throws up a prayer of shot that it such a high arc shot it looks like it's going to hit the roof of the Boston Garden...
...And it goes in.
I forgot who won the game (I think it ended up being the Celtics), but it was one of the craziest games I've ever seen.
After that year, they changed the rule about inbounding from halfcourt after a technical foul. |