The Blazers are super wrong, but Doc Rivers will likely get the blunt of the blame for the Blazers mistake.
We all make clerical errors, it just doesn’t cost us our second best employee.
According to Joe Freeman, the Blazers accidentally left guard C.J. McCollum off the active list for their game against the Los Angeles Clippers, making the third-year guard a healthy scratch.
CJ McCollum said he didn't know for sure he would be inactive until pregame introductions when his name was not called.
— Joe Freeman (@BlazerFreeman) January 7, 2016
Before every game, coaches are required to submit a list of active and inactive players, designating up to 13 players as “active” on their 15-man roster. So Wednesday night, in a ritual that takes place every game night, a team official approached Stotts with the roster and Stotts signed it. Then it was delivered to the arena’s official stats crew.
Active rosters are due one hour before tipoff and cannot be changed after that 60-minute mark. By the time the Blazers discovered their error — that they had included rookie Luis Montero instead of McCollum on the active list — it was too late to fix the mistake.
According to reports, the NBA gave Clippers coach Doc Rivers the option to let McCollum play. Of course he declined, and laughed about it later.
CJ McCollum and Doc Rivers postgame pic.twitter.com/kUE2bCtgbD
— Casey Holdahl (@CHold) January 7, 2016
Had the Blazers attempted to play him, they would have received a technical foul, and he still would have had to remain inactive.