Miller's Last Second Heroics Overruled; Nuggets Top Bulls 90-89

Courtesy of SB Nation's terrific sports history blog, Inhistoric, another angle on the almost-game-winner

In the comments below (because yeah, we have those!), InHistoric explains the photo:

Here’s the only angle that shows definitively that it was no good. The photo is kinda blurry, but if you watch the highlight on TV in HD, and you pause it when the light first goes red on this angle, you can tell w/o question that he got it off too late.

I'll have to take his word for it that the HD-look reveals a definitive answer, but again, judging from the picture, it's still shockingly close. And in my eyes, too close to call. Alas, I trust the eyes of others who have deemed the call fair, many of them Bulls fans, and I have a feeling I'm in the minority on this one. It's just surprising they overturned it, is all.

With a special thanks to Mark at Sham Sports, we've got this excellent photo of the game-winner that was not to be:

Not to invoke football jargon here, but was there really enough evidence to overturn this shot? I mean, even in this, a still photo, it's impossible to tell whether the ball's in his hands or not. Bulls fans seem to have conceded that the refs made the right call, but... I don't know. I'm pretty surprised they overturned it.

Over at SB Nation’s Blog-A-Bull, the Chicago fans are licking their wounds. Some post-game thoughts:

It’s certainly possible that the referees would have ruled Brad Miller’s shot no good when it occured if they knew they wouldn’t have the crutch of replay, because I believe it’s one of Newton’s laws of physics that Brad Miller cannot catch and shoot a basketball in 0.3 seconds. But they called it good, and there are shots of the replay (ht: Sham) that indicate that it wasn’t. When they started taking forever when looking at the replay, it seemed less and less likely that the on-court ruling would stand, and you could feel the crowd getting more nervous.

But honestly, we got to jump around and high-five like idiots (as did the Bulls) when Miller hit the shot, so we got that winning feeling, if only for a short time. That was fun.

This was a great game, and I was immensely impressed with the Bulls defense. I kept being surprised that they were staying in the game, and then to see them really lock down in the fourth quarter and take a lead was outstanding. With the season Carmelo Anthony is having, he’s incredibly scary to see opposing your team in a close game, but the combination of Luol Deng and Joakim Noah made his life as difficult as possible, and both were fantastic on that end of the floor all night. Everyone was, pretty much, with the only defensive holes popping up sporadically was a free pass for Nene to dive down the middle of the lane without impediment. Though I wouldn’t want to get in his way either.

The offense continues to stink, and I’m getting more used to it by the game. They can’t shoot 3s, they don’t get to the line (Rose was avoiding the lane it was a pit of lava and his only FTAs were on the late possession where Billups was trying to give a foul on the floor), traits taken to the extreme when they finished the first quarter with 20 points on 10 field-goals. It almost seems like they’d be better off just chucking the ball at the rim as early in the possession as possible to allow their offensive rebounding to take over, and that was actually how they scored their last basket, an offensive board and then Noah getting the ball stripped right into Rose’s hands for a layup.

We know how the next possession went, a foul by Hinrich on Billups with .6 seconds left. He missed the second free throw leaving just enough time for a catch-and-shoot, though apparently not enough for Brad Miller to do so.

Meanwhile, the guys at Denver Stiffs are breathing a sigh of relief, as the Nuggets were literally milliseconds away from a 3-game losing streak:

Have you ever seen an ending like that?!?! The refs must decide if Brad Miller’s quick jumper with :00.3 seconds left on the clock was still in his hand … if it’s good the Bulls win 91-90 … if it’s still on his finger tips then it’s no good and Denver sneaks out of Chicago with a 90-89 win. Fortunately, the ball was still on Miller’s fingertip and Denver snaps a two-game losing streak.

I am not going to lie. When that shot by Miller touched nothing but net … I felt pretty awful. Denver controlled most of game and for Chicago to slip in and steal the win would have burned. Suddenly the Nuggets would have been on a three-game losing streak and Earl Smith III or ESIII’s return would have been spoiled.

Fortunately for the Nuggets head official Mark Wunderlich wasn’t afraid to make the unpopular and correct call and Denver got the win. To paraphrase what Scott Hastings said to Chauncey Billups in the post game interview, sometimes it’s better to learn a lesson and still win the game rather than to learn a lesson and lose the game.

The biggest problem with the final play was that the Nuggets left Miller wide open at the top of the key and he had a clean look at the hoop with no defender in sight. So, the Nuggets still got the win, but they should have been able to put this game away a lot earlier.

And it’s true; the Nuggets had this game. There’s no excuse for letting it go down to the wire like that, and while the Bulls have shown some surprising grit this season, the Nuggets need to find that extra gear if they want to call this season a success. It’s a moral victory for the Bulls to take a game to the final seconds against a team like Denver, but for Denver, it’s essentially a moral loss. They’ve reached a place as a team where they should be winning comfortably against a team like Chicago.

As our Nuggets blog outlines, it’s better to learn a lesson and win than have to lose, but before long, the Nuggets do have to learn that lesson…