That's just blatantly illegal. Not, "that should be illegal because he made DeRozan look so foolish on that play," but actually NBA rulebook illegal. He's out of bounds, plain and simple. This is not one of the ludicrous flops he dupes NBA officials into calling his way (although you could argue his finish on the other end was one). No, this was a straight up blown call by the referees. An absolute hack-job against a team that has already been burned by them this week. Will the NBA issue another apology while continuing to allow the Raptors to lose games despite horribly missed calls on vital plays?
Where's the high standard that these officials are supposedly held to? Again, that play wasn't a judgement call. Ginobili takes two full steps out of bounds between dribbles before jumping back into the play and continuing his dribble, a clear violation of NBA rules if there ever was one.
Now the NBA has a well defined history for bending the rules to improve play but we have to draw the line somewhere. I get it, people want to see skilled plays, which is why we see extensive travelling violations (all the dragged pivots, self-passes off the backboard, pro-hops and just blatant three-step drives), but now we aren't calling out of bounds any more?
Cool. NBA teams should start drawing up inbounds plays where the passer just shoots and the refs award him four points for having shot from beyond now meaningless out-of-bounds line.
I know that that call was not on a deciding play like the missed foul against Charlotte was, it was still a key play in a close game that the Raptors would eventually lose. I mean, the game went to overtime so to say that those three points plus the foul that Ginobili was awarded by virtue of that blown out-of-bounds call weren't big is ridiculous. It cut the Raptors lead in half.
I don't blame Ginobili for this play (if you aren't cheating you aren't trying) but it obviously aggravates my rage that it was him to pull off this play. Of course it was... who else would try something so patently outside the rules. And yeah that it happened to the Raptors (the NBA's doormat) pisses me off as a Canadian. But what ultimately disgusts me is how obvious this call was. Even though you can't actually see the feet touch out-of-bounds on the first view in the clip provided you just know something is wrong. It just feels wrong.
But in the end things are as they always were. The Raptors suck and I hate Ginobili, the Spurs, the referees and maybe the entire Association in general.