Referees admit to missing foul call at end of Knicks' Game 4 win over Pistons

At the end of the day, it's what happens on the floor that matters. Everything else is just noise.

And on the floor in Detroit just before the buzzer sounded in Game 4, the referees did not blow their whistle for a foul in the Knicks' 94-93 win over the Pistons to take a 3-1 series lead in the opening round of the NBA Playoffs on Sunday.

But after the game, referee David Guthrie, the game's crew chief, acknowledged that on the final play – Tim Hardaway Jr. shooting a three-pointer from the corner – the non-call for the contact made by Josh Hart after Hardaway's pump-fakeshould have been called a foul.

"During live play, it was judged that Josh Hart made a legal defensive play," Guthrie told the pool reporter. "After postgame review, we observed that Hart makes body contact that is more than marginal to Hardaway Jr. and a foul should have been called."

The contact wasn't hard to see, and through the Knicks' bench erupting onto the floor in celebration, the lone figure in blue, Pistons head coach JB Bickerstaff, entered the fray to confront the referees, gesticulating wildly. It was all in vain.

"There's contact on Tim Hardaway's jump shot," Bickerstaff said matter-of-factly in his postgame news conference. "I don't know any other way around it. There's contact on his jump shot. The guy [Hart] leaves his feet. He's at Timmy’s mercy. I repeat: There's contact on his jump shot."

Pistons head coach J.B. Bickerstaff was heated after this no-call to end the game ???? pic.twitter.com/gtSvQPkVTU— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) April 27, 2025

Hart, in his typical fashion, admitted to everything but confessed to nothing.

"Did I make contact with him? Yeah. I made contact with him," Hart said, speaking from the locker room a few minutes before Guthrie's comments were made public. "Was it legal? I don’t know. We'll let the two-minute report [judge] that.

"He shot faked, I feel like I kind of got there. I feel like I was kind of straight up. He kind of jumped into me, trying to get the foul. At the end of the game, it's tough."

Hardaway needed fewer words to say more or less the same thing: "You guys saw it. Blatant."

Hart, who finished with 14 points, 10 rebounds, five assists and four steals in 42 minutes, didn't have much sympathy for Hardaway.

"We don't pay attention to it," he said of the referee's calls. "We go with whatever they call. Sometimes it benefits us, sometimes it doesn't."

But would he have called a foul there? "It went by so fast there, none of that went through my mind there," Hart said.

In a game that was noted for its physicality, there were just 17 fouls called on New York and 17 on Detroit, with the home team shooting 17 free throws to the visitors' 18.

"You wanna match their physicality," Karl-Anthony Towns, who committed five fouls, said. "It gives old-school vibes. I think this is great for kids watching who haven't been able to see old-school basketball, to see this kind of reminiscent game of old-school physicality. I'm just honored to be part of it."

Had the foul been called, Hardaway, an 85.5 percent free-throw shooter on the season, would have had three attempts to make two to win the game. Instead, he finished 0-for-1 from the line in a one-point loss.