Slate's Bizbox
sports nut: The stadium scene.

Do-Over Dos and Don'tsThe NBA dares to trifle with the sports-time continuum.

By John Swansburg
Posted Friday, March 7, 2008, at 12:15 PM ET
Shaquille O'Neal. Click image to expand.

On Saturday evening, the Atlanta Hawks and Miami Heat will suit up for the rarest of NBA occasions: a doubleheader. Before their regularly scheduled matchup, the teams will replay the end of a game that originally took place on Dec. 19. The Hawks defeated the Heat that night 117-111. After the game, the Heat filed a protest alleging that, in the contest's waning moments, the Hawks' statistics crew incorrectly counted Shaquille O'Neal's fifth foul as his sixth. The NBA checked and, sure enough, the Heat was right. Commissioner David Stern declared Atlanta's victory null and void and ordered the teams to replay the last 51.9 seconds of the game this weekend, starting with the Hawks up 114-111.

There's not a lot riding on the outcome of this replay—Miami is one of the worst teams in the league, and Atlanta, if they're lucky, will be the worst team to make the playoffs. Yet this rematch is fascinating nevertheless, not because anyone cares about who wins but because it offers a rare glimpse into what happens when you try to redress an error after the final whistle has blown.

This is not something any of the major sports leagues are in the habit of doing. The NFL allows coaches to challenge plays, but the window to turn back time is incredibly small—once the next play has started, the previous one is in the books. Pro football seems to have recognized that any more aggressive attempt to turn back the clock would be hubris. Generally, the NBA and Major League Baseball have agreed. But every now and then, these two leagues have tried to right a wrong after the fact. Remember the curious case of the pine tar game, when George Brett's homer was disallowed because he used too much of the stuff on his bat? The American League president overturned that call, ruling the game should be restarted in the ninth inning. The NBA last replayed a game that same year, 1983, when Ronald Reagan was president and a Los Angeles Laker named Norm Nixon got it in his head to fake a free throw.

When it decided to grant Miami's protest, the NBA probably thought these were ideal circumstances for its first do-over in a generation. The matchup was low-stakes, and the disputed call occurred at the very end of the game, meaning there wouldn't be much replaying to do. Yet even taking those factors into account, there's no way the replay will be anything but a farce. Every fan who's demanded ex post facto justice after a referee screwed his team out of a win should be forced to tune in this weekend to see the folly of this idea. Watch Hawks-Heat Part II on Saturday night—it will only take a minute—and you'll see that the old saying is true: You can't put the genie back in the bottle, particularly one as big as Kazaam.

Why will Saturday's mini-game be such a shambles? Replaying a pro basketball game is a lot more complicated than replaying a point in your mom's driveway. For starters, you've got to schedule it. In this instance, the NBA did the only sensible thing, instructing the teams to hold the replay before their next meeting in Atlanta. The problem is that a lot has happened since Dec. 19. In the weeks following the original game, Miami's Dorrell Wright injured his knee, rookie guard Daequan Cook was sent to basketball's minor leagues, and Shaquille O'Neal—the man ostensibly at the center of this replay—was traded to Phoenix for Shawn Marion and Marcus Banks. The Hawks, meanwhile, unloaded 25 percent of their active roster for Mike Bibby and have been without rookie point guard Acie Law IV, who's on the shelf with a tweaked wrist.

If the idea was to replay the game under something approaching the original conditions, that has not come to pass; the teams that take the court on Saturday will be merely rough approximations of the teams that duked it out in Hawks-Heat Part I. But what are the alternatives? Should the NBA force each team to play with the skeleton crew of guys left over from the original game? Should the Heat be forced to recall Cook, now running point for the NBDL's Iowa Energy? And what about Alonzo Mourning, who tore his patellar tendon in an excruciating play in the original game? Should he be forced to shake off that career-ending injury and suit up one last time? Wait, I'm not done: Should the league fly Shaq in from Phoenix so he can play out those 51.9 seconds he was wrongly denied in December? Or would it be fairer to give Shawn Marion five fouls, a No. 32 jersey, and a fat suit and enlist him to do his best Shaq impersonation?

VIEW AS SINGLE PAGE
Print This ArticlePRINTDiscuss this in The FrayDISCUSSEmail to a FriendE-MAIL
Share on FacebookPost to MySpace!Share with MixxDigg ThisShare with RedditShare with del.icio.usShare with FurlShare with Ma.gnolia.comShare with SphereShare with Stumble Upon
John Swansburg is a Slate associate editor.
Photograph of Shaquille O'Neal by Barry Gossage/NBAE via Getty Images.
Join the Fray: our reader discussion forum
What did you think of this article?
POST A MESSAGE | READ MESSAGES
Washington Post
The Washington Post
OPINIONS
Imagine if...
Hiatt | What if McCain had waged his campaign based on respect?
Editorial: Meddlesome PalinKing: The Danger of Palin Power