The world basketball association Fiba is finding it increasingly difficult to explain at the pan-European European Championships.
In stark contrast to the exciting and rousing games in the preliminary round groups, there were rather unusual mishaps with the referees and the technology for a big tournament in the past few days.
In Germany against Lithuania, the referees forgot a free throw for the Lithuanians after a technical foul by the Germans.
In the game Georgia vs Turkey the clock wrongly advanced 22 seconds even though the game was stopped.
The problem: Both games went into extra time twice, so the officials' small mistakes were potentially decisive for the outcome of the encounters.
"I think you can see for yourself"
NBA star player Luka Doncic said of the recent error series: "I think you can see for yourself: the fall with time in the Turkey game, the technical foul here with Lithuania.
That's something that FIBA takes care of, so I don't have anything to say about it.” The Dallas Mavericks point guard grinned a little to himself, but refrained from more explicit criticism of those in charge.
Germany's Daniel Theis was dissatisfied with the role of the referees after the 109:107 against Lithuania.
"I have to be careful what I say now.
From this you can perhaps see that the referees are too busy with themselves to find their own line and then something like that is forgotten,” said Theis at Magentasport.
Lithuania and Turkey's protests were dismissed.
The Lithuanians said that this was not done within the required time and that the reason was not sufficient.
In the second case, the officials justified the decision by saying that Turkey could not prove that without the timing glitch the result would have been different.