NEW YORK — When it was finished, Rick Carlisle retreated to the locker room and watched it all over. The last four minutes of Game 1, painful as they were, needed to be seen again. They were a rough sight for the Pacers the first time. A lead slipped away. A number of careless errors. The catastrophe of a final minute. The questionable calls from officials that peppered a team already trying to avoid free-fall. All crunched together in such a short period.
Referee Zach Zarba told the pool reporter that the kicked ball violation call with 52 seconds left wasn't correct and hit Aaron Nesmith's hand instead. But the call wasn't reviewable. — Mike Vorkunov After the game, even with the knowledge in hand that Zarba had admitted an error, McConnell could not say the right call may have swung the night. “I’m not sure,” he said. “There were plays that we could have made that it doesn’t even come down to that.