Brad Stevens and Minnesota’s Ryan Saunders seem to be the NBA’s most easy-going of bench jockeys. Do you suppose the NBA assigned their three “most apt to be rusty after a lengthy break” refs to work a game for such nice guy coaches?
Consider that 34 of the game’s 208 possessions ended with two (or three) FT’s – 32 of them occurring in the final 36 minutes … that’s 16.3 percent of play being decided by a whistle.
By comparison, in 54 pre-ASB games with 10,755 offensive possessions, the Celts and their opposition combined for 1,097 Free-Throw Conversions – a mere 10.