Zach Harper of CBS Sports gives a thorough accounting of the rules and arguments surrounding the controversy that arose after the encounter between Reggie Jackson and Matt Barnes in the closing seconds of Game 5 on Tuesday. But the article reaches the wrong conclusion that the referees’ decision appears to be correct.

The rulebook states:

"If a player has his hand in contact with the ball and an opponent hits the hand causing the ball to go out-of-bounds, the team whose player had his hand on the ball will retain possession."

The most reasonable interpretation is that the rule is referring to the one, same hand of the offensive player – the one hit by the defensive player. The text initially describes "his hand," then uses the definite article to refer to "the hand," so we can safely infer that the latter is simply referencing the former. There is no mention of the offensive player's other hand, which in this case would be Jackson's right hand – the hand that seemed to touch the ball last. The theory Harper cites attempts to use the fact that Jackson's right hand was touching the ball when his left hand was slapped in order to shoehorn the facts to squeeze in under the rule's coverage.

But the applicability of the rule is more straightforward than imagined: It is to address situations where the the defensive player's slap of the offensive player's hand, which is treated as part of the ball, and the release of the ball from that same hand, both occur simultaneously before the ball immediately goes out of bounds.

In other words, in situations where one player clearly touched the ball last (and the consensus seems to be that Jackson did), the other team should always get the ball. That is the overarching rule.

The interpretation discussed by Harper essentially relies on an expansive definition of the word "causing" in the rule text that reads "hits the hand causing the ball to go out-of-bounds." In common conversational usage, Barnes' contact did cause – i.e., set in motion actions that led to – the ball sailing out of bounds, but not before it touched Jackson's right hand. The rule concerns a direct causal reaction where contact provides sufficient force to drive the ball straight out of bounds, without any intervening event.

Taking this broad definition of "causing" to its logical extreme reveals that it is faulty. What if, after leaving Jackson's right hand, the ball had instead bounced off Russell Westbrook's hand, then trickled out of bounds? Would it still be Thunder ball? Barnes' slap still would have caused, generally speaking, the ball to go out of bounds. What if it had ping-ponged back and forth among Jackson, Westbrook and Kevin Durant before ricocheting out of bounds? Would that still be Thunder ball?

The point being, the latter two scenarios are not distinguishable from the actual scenario that played out Tuesday night if we adopt such a liberal interpretation of the rule's meaning, despite producing what would be an illogical result that no referee could convincingly justify.

Assuming there was clear video evidence that Jackson’s right hand touched the ball last, the rulebook seems to dictate that the ball be awarded to the Clippers.

Editor's Note:  Late Wednesday, the NBA issued a statement that the referees properly awarded the ball to the Thunder because video replays did not offer a sufficient basis to overturn the original call: "In order to reverse the call made on the court, there has to be ‘clear and conclusive’ evidence. Since no replay provided such evidence, the play correctly stood as called with the Thunder retaining possession.”  In affirming the referees' decision, the NBA did not mention the alternative interpretation of the rulebook discussed in the CBS Sports story.