Quote:
Originally Posted by KC_Connection
There is nothing selectively edited about the owner not releasing the ball and not knocking it away so Jokic can't initiate a fast break. That happened and it doesn't take much to reason that he did it quite deliberately given his basketball background.
And I watched that LeBron play as well and strongly believe Jokic would have attempted to do the same thing in that situation too if it was a playoff game. Jokic is a ruthless and cutthroat high IQ player in a way that most guys in the league simply are not. He takes advantage of any team's disadvantage and it would have been on the refs to stop play in that situation (which they obviously likely would have done because it was LeBron James, the greatest the sport has ever seen who was potentially injured, and not some random player). Now the refs may have well stopped play yesterday too if the incident never happened, but Jokic was going to force them into making that call for themselves.
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It is because it looks as if he’s looking at Jokic the entire way and like a petulant kid was stomping the ground refusing to give the ball up. This happened in practically a split second. He had the ball for what, 3 seconds? Ishbia wasn’t even looking at Jokic until he felt the ball getting tugged. In the moment it’s not surprising that he would react wondering “wait what is this guy doing?” The narrative that he was clutching the ball for some advantage is a bit extra. He looked like he was focused on helping the fan and okogie get up. Every clip showing the lead up shows that he wasn’t even watching Jokic. The way he reacted I’m not sure he even realized he had the ball in his hand.