Let’s do some analysis of that “bad” call. Durant drove to the basket, and ran into James. The initial call was against Durant, for charging; it was reversed to blocking, against James. There are two issues that need to be separated: first, what was the correct call? And second, should the play even have been reviewed?
The correct call appears to have been blocking, because on replay, James was clearly still moving at the time Durant ran into him, and further, James shifted his body in a way that he appeared to initiate contact. So it seems the refs did get the call right.
The real problem was in the review. The rules say that kind of play can’t be reviewed unless there’s a question of whether the defender, James in this case, was in the restricted area. He clearly was not, wasn’t close, so the play should not have been reviewable. Once it was reviewed, and only then, could other factors, such as James’s movement, be taken into account.
There’s a simple legal analogy for this situation. The police illegally enter your home, and while there, find drugs, so they arrest you. The drugs were there, the drugs are illegal, the law says you should be arrested for having them. But if the police had been following the law, none of this could have happened.
There is even a doping analogy. Landis was sanctioned for a positive in the testosterone isotope test. But that test is only supposed to be applied if his T/E ratio was above a certain criterion, and during the CAS hearing it came out that there were enough problems with the lab’s measurement of that that the isotope test never should have been run.
All that said, all this talk about how this call cost the Cavs the game is a little exaggerated. The probability of their winning would have increased quite a bit, but it wasn't a stark win vs. loss change. If the charging call stood, the Cavs would have got the ball with a two point lead and 30+ seconds to play. They could have run the game clock down to about ten seconds, and if they made a field goal, would have had a four (or five) point lead. In that case it would have been very hard for the Warriors to win. But if the Warriors had stopped them, they would have got the ball back with time to shoot a tying or winning basket.
Let’s say the odds of a stop were 50/50, and the odds of a tying basket were 50/50. So the Warriors still had roughly a 25% chance of tying the game, which means the Cavs had a 75% chance of winning in regulation. Also, if the Warriors had tied the game, the Cavs still would have had about a 50% chance of winning in OT, so overall their chances of winning were close to 90%.
That’s pretty certain, right? Yes, but as events actually unfolded, the game did go to OT, which means that Cavs still had a 50% chance of winning. So the call reduced their odds from about 90% to 50%. That’s a very significant decrease, the Cavs certainly have reason to be upset, but it’s not as though the call made it certain they would lose. It turned a near-certain win into a 50/50 proposition. And it was only 50/50 because of the mistakes the Cavs made later in the game; they still could have won, even with that call.
What about those Cavs’s mistakes later in the game? With about five seconds to play, and trailing by one, a Cav player got two free throws. He made the first to tie the game, but missed the second. He missed the second badly, which was actually a break for the Cavs, because it bounced towards one of their own players, J.R. Smith. The miss was the kind of thing players sometimes attempt intentionally when the free throw would still leave the team short, and they need a quick field goal. Smith, though, just dribbled until it was too late for a shot.
Did these cost the Cavs the game? If the second FT had been made, they would have had a one point lead with about five seconds left. That would be enough time for the Warriors to get a shot off, so it would not have been a certain Cavs win by any means. Let’s say their odds would have been about 70%. What if the Cavs had attempted the FG after Smith rebounded? James was wide open in the corner; Smith could have passed to him. By that time, the clock would be down to close to zero, so if James had made that hypothetical shot, the Cavs almost certainly would have won. But a wide open shot from that distance is not a certainty; it’s roughly 50/50.
Which is about what the Cavs faced going into OT anyway! People who claim these plays cost the Cavs the game forget this. The Cavs did not lose in regulation; they went into OT, where they still had about a 50/50 chance of winning. So whatever the odds were of the Cavs winning if the refs had not reversed that call; if the second free throw had not been missed; if Smith had passed to James; those odds have to be compared not to 0%, but to 50%. Once one realizes this, one sees that while these were critical plays, they did not affect the outcome of the game quite as dramatically as many are claiming.