Stupid? I don't think so. Heavily flawed? Absolutely. And, the foundation lies in this myopic myth from the article...
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A point arrives when the penalty for an infraction has a greater impact on the final score than the infraction itself.
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Here's are two realities of basketball I've come to learn:
*A game is never decided by one play. It is always decided by the totality of the 32/40/48 minutes (plus overtime, if applicable). If one play decided a game, you wouldn't need the other minutes.
*Every single time there's a one-point game, without exception, it's inevitable that the officials have done something -- via action or inaction -- to affect the outcome. Way too much goes on within the game's time span not to be the case.
So, why do we buy into this myth? It really comes down to human memory capacity. We can only remember so much, and we just can't take in all 60-100 possessions. Therefore, when a controversial call happens in a game's closing minutes, it's still typically fresh in people's minds. However, if a call is kicked in the first half, people get mad for 5-10 seconds, but just move onto the next play.
In truth, the smaller the score's margin, the greater chance an official's rulings -- be they in the beginning, middle, or end of a game -- will affect that game's outcome. While those look at Notre Dame/Xavier, I guarantee you that there were rulings in other close games that affected that game just as much.