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Hey Roger Goodell, do ​SOMETHING about this Saints mess​

Hey Roger Goodell, do ​SOMETHING about this Saints mess​
Photo by Ronald Martinez/Getty Images

Whenever a baseball team loses a game it should have won early in the season you always hear someone say "A game in May is just as important as a game in September." This axiom is blatantly false. You have plenty of time to make up for a loss in May. In September when there aren't nearly as many games left on the schedule, it's much more difficult to overcome that loss.

If Cody Parkey had missed a field goal in the first quarter of the Bears playoff game against the Eagles no one would have remembered it. Since he missed the game winner as time expired he will live in eternal infamy in Chicago.

Same goes for that no-call in the Rams-Saints game. With just a minute left in the game, the Saints would have gotten four more downs. The Rams had timeouts but the odds of overcoming that deficit with seconds left would have been overwhelming. It was a much bigger call than any earlier in the game.

Afterwards I heard a bunch of people saying "Well if they're going to go back to that blown call why don't they go back to the face mask penalty that wasn't called on the Saints, or the delay of game in the second quarter? Those were blown calls too that affected the outcome."

They did affect the score but not the outcome. With just a minute left, that one call had a direct effect on the final score. There was time to overcome every other call or no-call in that game.

Now the question is what will the NFL do about it? Saints fans want justice. A New Orleans lawyer has filed a lawsuit ordering Commissioner Roger Goodell to put both teams back on the field and replay the final minute of the game. It won't happen but it's the kind of pressure that might make the league actually do something other than give us lip service about the state of its officiating.

It's at an all-time low. The best refs are the ones who go unseen. NFL refs are in the crosshairs of fans week in and week out.

You would think replay would have helped the situation but it's only made it worse. The simplest calls are paralyzing because they know they have the crutch of going back and sorting it out with replay. It's maddening. And don't get me started with how long and agonizing the process is. After two replays an entire television audience knows how they are going to rule on it, yet it takes forever to get the game restarted. It's not that hard guys. Figure out a better way.

And if we need penalties replayed then so be it. I hear so many people against it but I heard the same thing about replay in the first place. If your only problem with it is that it's never been done before then that's a pretty weak argument. That's how progress has always been thwarted.

Like I said, the most important plays, hits, baskets, scores and referee calls are the ones late in the game. So make those the priority. If we need a replay on a referee's call or no-call in the last two minutes of a game then let's get one. Don't let one bad call decide that a team is or isn't going to the Super Bowl when we have the ability to get it right. It will lend more credibility to your sport. There are conspiracy theorists out there that believe that the league wanted Los Angeles and not New Orleans in that game. All they did was give them ammunition.

Start with pass interference and if they see the need to add other penalties then they can but not doing anything, Roger Goodell, would be another horrific no-call.

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The Thunder beat the Rockets, 111-96. Photo by Alex Slitz/Getty Images.

It was midway through the third quarter of the Oklahoma City-Houston NBA Cup semifinal matchup on Saturday night. Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had just made a short jumper in the lane and, to his delight, a time-out was immediately called.

He needed it.

He retreated to midcourt, crouched down, propped himself up by his fingertips and took deep breath after deep breath. It was that sort of night. And given the way the Rockets and Thunder have defended all season long, such a game was predictable.

In the end, it was Oklahoma City 111, Houston 96 in a game where the teams combined to shoot 41%. The immediate reward for the Thunder: two days off to recover. The bigger reward: a matchup with Milwaukee on Tuesday night for the NBA Cup, with more than $300,000 per player the difference between winning and losing.

“That's what defense does for you,” said Thunder coach Mark Daigneault, whose team has held opponents to 41% shooting or worse a league-best 11 times this season — and is 11-0 in those games. “It keeps you in games.”

The Rockets-Thunder semifinal was basketball, with elements of football, rugby, hockey and probably even some wrestling thrown in. It wasn't unusual. It's how they play: defense-first, tough, gritty, physical.

They are the two top teams in the NBA in terms of field-goal percentage defense — Oklahoma City came in at 42.7%, Houston at 43.4% — and entered the night as two of the top three in scoring defense. Orlando led entering Saturday at 103.7 per game, Oklahoma City was No. 2 at 103.8, Houston No. 3 at 105.9. (The Thunder, by holding Houston to 96, passed the Magic for the top spot on Saturday.)

Houston finished 36.5% from the field, its second-worst showing of the season. When the Rockets shoot 41% or better, they're 17-4. When they don't, they're 0-5.

“Sometimes it comes down to making shots,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said. “Especially in the first half, we guarded well enough. ... But you put a lot of pressure on your defense when you're not making shots.”

Even though scoring across the NBA is down slightly so far this season, about a point per game behind last season's pace and two points from the pace of the 2022-23 season, it's still a golden age for offense in the league. Consider: Boston scored 51 points in a quarter earlier this season.

Saturday was not like most games. The halftime score: Rockets 42, Thunder 41. Neither team crossed the 50-point mark until Dillon Brooks' 3-pointer for Houston gave the Rockets a 51-45 lead with 8:46 left in the third quarter.

Brooks is generally considered one of the game's tougher defenders. Gilgeous-Alexander is one of the game's best scorers. They're teammates on Canada's national team, and they had some 1-on-1 moments on Saturday.

“It's fun. It makes you better,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “That's what this league is about, competing against the best in the world and defensively, he is that for sure. And I like to think that of myself offensively. He gives me a chance to really see where I'm at, a good test. I'd say I handled it pretty well.”

Indeed he did. Gilgeous-Alexander finished with 32 points, the fifth instance this season of someone scoring that many against the Rockets. He's done it twice, and the Thunder scored 70 points in the second half to pull away.

“We knew that if we kept getting stops we would give ourselves a chance,” Gilgeous-Alexander said. “And we did so.”

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