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I'll jump in the fray. Always good to look at things from history, lest we forget.
I think that there is no way to UNDERSTATE the involvement of the FIBA Director Mr Jones. This entire situation could have been resolved by a more proactive approach to this game:
1. Have an experienced timer. This is inexcusable and not the fault of the officials.
2. Have someone/s at the table who speak the language of the referees and the teams playing, this was not the case during the game. Neither official spoke English and if memory serves could not understand each others language. So now you have 2 officials on a game who can not communicate with each other let alone one of the competitors.
3. After the first error by the clock operator, make sure that everything is squared away before the ballis put into play the second time. He already inserted himself into the game, he might as well make sure things were perfect.
General thoughts on some of your conclusions:
1. You cant take a 12 second snippet of Jones and Korkia and make a statement about what happened. What happened prior to this event? Was Korkia playing "dirty" prior to that and Jones finally had enough? Was Jones just being a thug? Can't tell by this 12 seconds, which IMO takes away some credibility for this argument
2. A lot of your arguments seem to be "2 Wrongs make a right". 2 wrongs are 2 wrongs.
3. I think you under estimate the effect that moving McMillen off the line made. Edeshko was able to make a quasi running throw the length of the court. Had McMillen been allowed to stay where he was Edeshko would have had to drop further back to throw the ball over McMillen. Ask Rick Pitino about the advantages of guarding the player throwing the ball in bounds.
4. Whether Edshko's foot was on the line is still open for debate. Again, had McMillen been allowed to be in front of him this wouldn't be an issue
5. This is what can happen when you try to make things "fair" whether the rules support them or not.
Always a good topic for discussion. People can disagree but the fact remains that the USSR has the gold and we don't from that one. Also like ANY game that comes down to the wire, we have a tendendcy to forget about what happened the ENTIRE game, which IMO makes the last 3 seconds in THIS game more into perspective.
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