The Most RIDICULOUS Calls Made In NBA History

Here's a playoff game featuring the Blazers vs the Suns back in 2010. Now as the play develops, the sidelines referee suddenly blows his whistle and calls a foul. At this point in time, everyone on the Blazers side was absolutely clueless as they didn't know what just happened, and to be fair, no one in the arena knew. Apparently the ref initially called a foul on Brandon Roy against Steve Nash, but after quickly realizing his mistake, he then transferred the foul to Marcus Camby, which then makes everything even more confusing, because as you can see, Camby is right here, and Nash is right here. So there's no way Camby could have fouled Nash in any possible way, I mean, Camby was like at least, what, 10 feet away from him? Sheesh guys. And what's even crazier is that no one bothered to contest this call, and if that wasn't embarrassing enough, this incident was now even logged down in the NBA's official database. Holy smokes guys. I mean, this is just one of the most ridiculous calls that has ever been made in NBA history, and today we're going to show you the entire lot of it, and I'm definitely sure some of these calls will make you go, what the f*** just happened? Alright guys, this first incident happened all the way back in the early 2000s involving a veteran ref named Bennett Salvatore and a referee favorite, Allen Iverson. I mean, it's no secret that AI didn't receive much love from the refs, but this call was just completely outrageous. See, Iverson was ready to run the fast break in this play when Salvatore suddenly called a foul out of nowhere, which made AI react wildly in disagreement. His reaction, to me, was pretty normal given what just happened, and he didn't even get up in Salvatore's face to say anything malicious or anything like that. However, Salvatore suddenly slapped AI with a tee, saying that he got teed up because he was riling up the crowd against him. Not satisfied with his explanation, and maybe rightfully so, AI clapped back at Salvatore, saying, This is absolutely ridiculous if you ask me. And it appears this was an ego thing for Salvatore, because before this incident, he already felt disrespected by Larry Brown, who was yapping at his ears all night, and AI's reaction was the trigger that finally set him off. Now speaking of refs that get easily triggered, Joey Crawford is one of them, and aside from that fact, he's also notoriously known for making head-scratching calls, especially during crucial moments in the playoffs. A writer for Bleacher Report once wrote an article about Crawford's history of bad officiating, and here's a concrete example, which he saw first hand back in 2004. One specific incident I am reminded of came in the 2004 Western Conference Finals. The Timberwolves were the number one seed and were facing the Lakers, the number 2 seed. In a critical moment, Shaq barreled down the lane and completely ran over Wolves center Mark Madsen. Crawford blew the whistle and indicated an offensive foul emphatically right away. He was called over to the scorers table and realized he was calling Shaq for his 6th foul, disqualifying him from play early in the 3rd quarter. He rescinded his call, target center exploded, Shaq stayed in the game, and we know the rest. The T-Wolves eventually lost that series 4 games to 2, but if Shaq fouled out that game, the T-Wolves could have made their first ever finals appearance, but unfortunately, Joey Crawford was there to spoil the party for them. Anyway, guys, here's another call that's completely ridiculous. With 7.6 left on the clock and leading by 1, the Bulls only needed one stop to steal game 5 from the Knicks during their semi-final encounter in the 1994 playoffs. The Knicks drew up a brilliant play that led to Hubert Davis being wide open on the top of the key. Pippen then ran out hard to close him out, but just when he realized the shot, referee Hugh Hollins apparently blew a late whistle on this play, much to the dismay of Phil Jackson and the rest of the Bulls. Now, you see, this happened in the 90s, and as we all know, the officials were pretty lenient in making calls back then, and 99% of the time, they wouldn't make a call as soft as that one. Anyway, Davis was rewarded with two free throws, and he calmly sank them both to give the Knicks the W, 87-86. After the game, Pippen still couldn't believe that he got robbed with that last play, and here's what he had to say over the controversial call. When I heard the whistle, it was like, what happened? Who fouled? I didn't think I had made a foul. Have I ever seen a single call make a difference like that? No. Never, ever. It cost us the whole series. I mean, that one single play has led to many what-ifs, which could have had a huge ripple effect. See, if it wasn't for that foul, the Bulls could have won that game and closed the Knicks out in six games. Then, they would have faced the Pacers in the next round, and had they won that series, it would have set them up for a finals matchup against the Houston Rockets. Now, if they won the championship that year, would Jordan have returned to a team that could win without him? Sheesh, guys. And what would that have said about the legacy of MJ? The possibilities, guys. The possibilities. Anyways, moving on here. As I said earlier, Joey Crawford is one of those old, grumpy officials that you shouldn't probably mess with if you want to win the game, because he might just give you a tee, even if you're sitting on the bench. And this is exactly what happened to Tim Duncan right here. Timmy was surprised at how he got teed up the first time, and before he could even recover from that... Basically, Duncan was ejected for the first time in his career by simply sitting on the bench and just laughing. I mean, now is that crazy or what? Although Timmy got fined $25,000 for saying some stuff towards the official, it was Crawford who truly paid the price for his petty behavior as his former commissioner, David Stern, brought down the hammer upon him. Stern suspended me for the rest of the season, I've already been fined $100,000, I thought there was a good chance my career might be over. Stern orders me to go see a Park Avenue psychiatrist, he tells me to go twice, 2 hours each session. This guy is going to make a determination on whether I'm crazy or not. Anyway guys, this next call didn't lead to any suspension on the refs part, but on second thought, the NBA should have called the refs on this one, given how crucial and super obvious it was. I mean, it was a tied ball game between the Rockets and the Warriors, KD then drives the but fumbles the ball in the process, and as both teams were scrambling for the ball, this happened. Now, I'm not sure if these refs were blind, or they just turned their heads around to intentionally not see that play. I mean, that's got to be the most blatant out of bounds missed call in NBA history. Anyway, that blunder resulted in 2 points courtesy of a Steph Curry jumper, but luckily the beard bailed out the refs on this one with this play right here. Now, since we pulled James Harden into this list, he's also become part of some of the most ridiculous missed calls in NBA history, which includes this play right here. Now, the refs thought that Harden missed the dunk right here, but actually he spiked it so hard that the net spun out, looking like Harden didn't really miss it. The ball went loose right after that, and the refs called it out of bounds in favor of the Spurs instead of counting it as 2 points. Anyway, that missed call turned out to haunt the Rockets later on, cause the game eventually went to double OT, where the Spurs beat them by, you guessed it, 2 points. Now for our last ridiculous call, here's Joey Crawford once again, but this time he actually fouled a player and blamed it on someone else. See, this happened in the East Finals between the Pistons and the Heat some years back, with the Heat being down by 3 with under 20 seconds left. The Heat were trying to close the gap with the little time left on the clock, when all of a sudden, you can see here that, after he gave Damon Jones a shove, Crawford quickly blew his whistle and called Billups for a foul for quote-unquote, pushing Jones into the sideline. Oh my goodness guys, talk about crazy.