Three NBA Moments Everyone Misunderstood Last Week

Talk about missing the point …

Three interesting happenings in the NBA last week.

Three focuses on the wrong thing.

March 10: Five Wizards get scorched

Watching the fourth quarter of Miami’s 150-129 win over Washington on Tuesday night reminded me of the girl who scored 113 points in a 137-32 win about 20 years ago.

When one very talented player is 6-foot tall and the opposing team has just nine girls in its entire school, all 5-4 or shorter, that can happen.

It shouldn’t happen, but that’s beside the point.

Where it REALLY shouldn’t happen is in the NBA, where the Wizards employ five guys the same size or taller than Bam Adebayo. Yet they couldn’t stop him from scoring 83 points.

Think about that: Everyone in the world knew Adebayo was gunning for Kobe Bryant’s 81-point night. In a game that turned into a blowout as the Heat big man was approaching 70, there was just one possible defensive strategy: Five guys on Adebayo.

Yet like the tiny school with two artists, a Math whiz and the football team’s mascot on the court, the Wizards couldn’t do anything about it.

You’re bothered that Adebayo needed 43 free throws to reach his total? Get a clue. More power to him for having absorbed 42 minutes of punishment.

You’re bent out of shape that he was even in the game with 1:16 left in order to surpass Kobe? It’s called chasing history and that’s perfectly acceptable when professionals are involved.

Now, the fact that five Wizards couldn’t stop this from happening? That’s what’s embarrassing.

March 11: The Cavaliers run out of challenges

A pair of hot teams, Cleveland and Orlando, engaged in a great NBA regular-season tussle Wednesday night … until the Cavaliers started circling raised index fingers like they were describing the solar system to a 5-year-old on a dark night.

They wanted seemingly every call challenged in the final minutes of their furious comeback attempt.

Fortunately, the NBA doesn’t allow that. You get one challenge, and if you get it right, you get a second. And that’s it.

Everyone knows that. Even the Cavaliers, who must have thought they deserved a prize for having gone 2-for-2 earlier.

On the contrary, their coach should have been reprimanded for exhausting his potential game-savers, including one on an out-of-bounds call in the all-important ninth minute of the game.

Yes, the system is flawed. But the problem isn’t how many, it’s who and how long.

This should be the rule: 60 seconds are permitted to review a call. If it’s not obvious that a mistake was made within that time frame, then it’s not glaring enough to warrant a reversal.

And that 60 seconds needs to start as soon as the coach tells the head referee what he’s challenging. That is immediately relayed to New Jersey, where Billy Kennedy and his crew – not the accused guilty parties – cue up the tape and get to work. Quickly.

The result: An unbiased verdict rendered before most people even realize the brief stoppage isn’t for a wet spot on the court.

And then comes the best part: You hook up one of the NBA’s best entertainers – Kennedy, the Voice of Challenges – to the arena PA system and give everybody a real treat: His oratory of the final verdict.

More challenges? Absolutely not.

Shorter ones and better judges? Now we're talking.

March 12: SGA denied by DNP

When Shai Gilgeous-Alexander put up 35 points against the Celtics on Thursday night, it was reported he’d broken Wilt Chamberlain’s record for most consecutive 20-point games.

According to who?

Supposedly, SGA topped 20 for the 127th straight time … which is impossible when you consider he hasn’t even played 127 straight games.

As of Thursday, he had, in fact, played FOUR.

Who makes this stuff up?

When Joe DiMaggio authored the greatest streak in sports history – a 56-game hitting streak – from May 15 to July 16 in 1941, he did it in 56 consecutive games.

Look up the definition of consecutive. Oxford says: Following continuously.

No asterisks in there, or anything about days off, load management or DNP. Heck, Oxford doesn’t even offer a definition for DNP.

When Wilt set the record, he did, in fact, play 126 straight games. And had at least 20 points in all 126.

The best run SGA has ever made is 36 straight. Like, in a row.

For the record, when Luka Doncic had 30 against the Nuggets on Saturday night, it gave him 13 straight games with 20 or more points.

That’s the REAL active leader. No record, but a nice accomplishment nonetheless.

Wilt can rest comfortably.