The New York Knicks are filing a protest to contest Monday’s 105-103 loss to the Houston Rockets, a league source said Tuesday.

With the game tied at 103, Rockets guard Aaron Holiday chucked up a prayer 3-pointer with 0.3 seconds remaining. Referee Jacyn Goble judged it a foul on Knicks guard Jalen Brunson for running into the shooter. Holiday converted on 2 of 3 free-throw tries to win the game for Houston.

After the final buzzer, crew chief Ed Malloy conceded in an interview that Brunson made “incidental contact” and the play should not have been called a foul. Had the whistle not blown, the Knicks and Rockets would have gone into overtime tied at 103.

“After seeing it during a postgame review, the offensive player was able to return to a normal playing position on the floor,” Malloy said in the interview with a pool reporter. “The contact, which occurred after the release of the ball, is therefore incidental and marginal to the shot attempt and should not have been called.”

The goal would be to continue the game. If the Knicks win the protest, New York and Houston would meet again to play a five-minute extra period.

Rumblings that the Knicks were mulling a protest began as soon as the last bell rang Monday in Houston. Of course, winning a protest involves more than just the admission of an inaccurate call, even when that call affects the final outcome.

A club must prove that officials misapplied a regulation, which means that for the Knicks to have a shot here, they have to show Monday’s refs gaffed not only conventionally.

New York could compare the final play of regulation to the last one of the first half, when a similar play occurred. In this instance, Knicks guard Donte DiVincenzo rose for a deep 3-pointer right before the buzzer sounded. When Holiday, who rushed to close out on him, clipped his leg, referees called a three-shot penalty.

But they had to go to the monitor to determine if there was time on the clock when the foul occurred. Once they established that a fraction of a second remained, the Rockets disputed the foul. Not only did Houston win the challenge, erasing the foul on Holiday, but it also convinced the refs to modify the call to a foul on DiVincenzo, who pushed his leg out on the play, knocking Holiday to the ground.

The Knicks may argue the play at the conclusion of the game wasn’t much different than the DiVincenzo one. Watch the replay of Brunson fouling Holiday closely, and you can see Holiday barely kicking out a leg. But the kickout on the fourth-quarter play was significantly more subtle than DiVincenzo’s. And even if the Knicks demonstrated a discrepancy between the two plays, it may not necessarily count as a misapplication of the rules.

There is a reason teams rarely submit protests. And when they do, there is a reason they rarely win. Just establishing a blown call is not enough. And it won’t be easy for the Knicks to prove foul play beyond that here. Fred Katz, Knicks staff writer

It appears like the Rockets aren’t very concerned about a prospective Knicks protest. For one, the prospects of a successful protest are exceedingly low, dating back to the 2007–08 regular season, when the last one was granted.

Secondly, Houston went through a similar process in December 2019, filing a protest over a James Harden dunk that wasn’t delivered in a double-overtime loss to the San Antonio Spurs. Although James Capers, the official who was in charge that day, confessed guilt after the game, the league nonetheless refused the Rockets’ claim after performing their inquiry.

The process of submitting a protest is difficult, equivalent to lengthy court proceedings, in addition to the $10,000 protest cost required. Of course, the money side sounds like a drop in the bucket to a billionaire, but the amount of labor necessary to follow through with procedures might not be worth the inconvenience, especially if the odds are historically against the protesting team.