Official announcement regarding the referees’ decision in the Budućnost VOLI – Crvena zvezda Meridianbet Semifinals Game 3

With the score 77:76 on the scoreboard and 53 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, a play occurred, which caused doubts about the correctness of the referees’ decision. That’s when Crvena zvezda Meridianbet player with number 1 on his jersey, John Brown, has fired a shot that went into the basket near the end of the 24-second shot-clock deadline. 

In such situations, the officiating team is obliged to stop the game (whenever they occur during the game) and call the 24-second violation and afterwards check the correctness of its decision with the IRS review. During the use of IRS they need to determine whether the ball has left the hands of the shooting player before the yellow diodes lit up on the backboard.

The officiating team has correctly applied the above described procedure of using IRS, after which they made the final decision that the successfully executed shot is not valid, since the replay of the play has shown, that the ball is still touching the fingers of the shooting player in the moment when the diodes light up on the board.