LeBron James’ block on Victor Oladipo

NBA referees missed two important calls, including goaltending on Cleveland star LeBron James, in the closing seconds of the Cavaliers’ 98-95 Game 5 victory against the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday, the league announced in its Last Two-Minute Report released on Thursday.

James should have been called for goaltending on Pacers guard Victor Oladipo’s driving layup with five seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, and had goaltending been called, the basket would have given Indiana a 97-95 lead.

Instead, Cleveland called timeout and set up a play for James, who made a three-pointer as time expired, giving Cleveland a 3-2 series lead.

So yes, while Indiana was disappointed it didn’t get the goaltending call, had refs called the out-of-bounds play correctly, there’s no way to play out the sequence of events the same way.

It was an experienced crew: James Capers (more than 100 playoff games, seven Finals games), Bill Spooner (more than 100 playoff games) and Bill Kennedy (more than 100 playoff games, five Finals games).

Referees can only review goaltending situations when they “are not reasonably certain whether goaltending or basket interference was called correctly during the last two minutes of the fourth period and overtime,” according to the rules.

But since Kennedy didn’t see the ball hit the baseline, he had no reason to doubt his call that the ball went off James.