The late Hue Hollins worked in the NBA for nearly three decades. His work as a referee in the league encompassed four decades. He refereed at least one NBA Finals game every year during the 90s and, overall, worked on the crew of 19 total NBA championship games and five All-Star contests.
With that resume, the Waco, Texas native was one of the most decorated NBA referees of all time. However, every time people talk about Hollins’ career in the NBA, it’s the “phantom foul” on Scottie Pippen in the 1994 Eastern Conference Semifinals between the Chicago Bulls and New York Knicks that comes to mind first. Hue never grasped why.
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“I don’t understand,” Hollins said in a 2009 interview with ESPN. “I worked in the NBA for 27 years and had an exemplary record as one of the top referees in the NBA. People harp on one call. Why? It was Game 5 of a seven-game series. They had to play two more. I don’t know why it has resonated with people in the media. It was one game, one call. If Scottie hadn’t fouled him, I wouldn’t have called it.”
The Bulls went from 3-2 up to 2-3 down
It was one call, indeed, in a matchup that went the full seven-game route. But it was also the one that many say decided the outcome of that playoff series.
The Bulls and Knicks were tied at 2-2 entering that May 18, 1994, game at Madison Square Garden. Chicago was up 86-85 with 7.6 seconds remaining in the game, and needed just one last defensive stand to pull off the upset and take the all-important 3-2 series lead.
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But Hollins blew his whistle on the Knicks’ possession and called a foul on Pippen after he made contact with Hubert Davis‘ arm after the latter took a long shot from the top of the key. Davis made both free throws to give the Knicks the 87-86 lead, and the Bulls could not get off a shot in their final possession.
“I’ve seen a lot of things happen in the NBA, but I’ve never seen anything happen like what happened at the end of the game,” said Bulls head coach Phil Jackson after the game.
No hard feelings between Hue and Phil
The Knicks went on to win the series in Game 7 and they would go on to play in the 1994 NBA Finals, where they lost to the Houston Rockets. Meanwhile, Hollins worked with the whistle in the NBA until his retirement in 2003 and it was interesting that beginning in 2005, Hue and Phil worked together for a Los Angeles Lakers-sanctioned annual event called “Basketball 101 with the Lakers.”
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“I never held it against Hue,” said Jackson. “That’s something you just can’t do. Those are things that happen in the course of the game. Guys make instantaneous judgments, and that’s what they have to do. If they’re a second or a beat late in their calls, then they start guessing. You can’t guess. They have to react to what they see. I don’t dwell on those things, although that was painful.”
It was indeed tough for the Bulls to lose Game 5 that way. And it’s easy to blame the series loss on that game, even if they went back to square one in Game 7. To Hollins’ credit, he was correct that it was just one play in a 48-minute game.
As for Pippen, perhaps he forgot that the basketball gods gifted them with two missed free throws by Patrick Ewing with 31.4 seconds left in the game. But in the Bulls’ ensuing possession, he chose to pass the ball to B.J. Armstrong with the shot clock winding down. Armstrong missed the hurried three, leaving the door open for the Knicks and the phantom foul.