Irish Basketball Team Refuses To Replay The Final Three-Tenths Of A Second In Controversial Playoff Game
Two Irish basketball teams are going to have to head back to the court to replay the final 0.3 seconds of a game that ended in controversial fashion.
As I'm sure you're already aware, the Limerick Sport Eagles met the Portlaoise Panthers in the quarterfinals of the Irish National League playoffs on March 23.
The Eagles (or is it "Sport Eagles?") took an 80-78 after a Limerick player was fouled just as the buzzer sounded and hit two free throws to win the game.
However, Portlaoise argued that the free throws shouldn't have been awarded because the foul occurred after the buzzer.
So, the team argued its case and were shot down with the ruling being that a referee's decision couldn't be retroactively erased.
So after a series of appeals, everyone settled on a solution: they'd replay the final 0.3 seconds of the game.
That's only slightly more than the amount of time it takes to blink.
I guess there's an opportunity to launch one at the buzzer and then play overtime.
However, common sense seems to have gotten the best of the Panthers, who said they don't want to replay the final fractions of a second because it would be "completely against the spirit of basketball."
"We think the ordering of 0.3 seconds to be replayed of our quarterfinal is completely against the spirit of basketball and, as said above, was never the basis for appeal," said the Panthers.
"We would never ask nor expect Limerick Sport Eagles, a club whom we hold in the highest regard, to travel to Portlaoise to play the remaining 0.3 seconds."
I checked on Google Maps, and the two cities aren't that far from each other — about an hour and 15 minutes by my estimation — but to do that much traveling to play less than a second? Yeah, that's ridiculous, and luckily for all parties involved, Portlaoise was reasonable about this.
However, I would be fascinated to see how many people would show up to see that final 0.3 seconds and how it would pan out.