The league was in a no win situation. The blown call was seen by fans around the country and was egregiously bad. Not only that, but it ruined what was a very entertaining game. Fining Dame for complaining about it would be a really bad look.
Not fining him is also a bad look. Or at least looks like a double standard in how they dish out fines.
It will be interesting to see how they handle that when they make the official announcement. Issue a warning?
My take was that the league wanted the Jazz to win because of the 5 game skid. The refs were probably told to shade toward Jazz. The refs just swallowed their whistles.
The next time Portland has the refs from the Utah game, could go something like this, but with a basketball haha.
Unless they do the right thing this off season and revisit and modify the rule to allow any type of review within 2 minutes of the end of the game that involves a possession change or score change. If they do that, then I think most fans and players will be happy and move on saying they did the right thing....I HOPE anyhow. lol.
The refs had already done their dirty work earlier in the game by kicking Ariza out of the game in the 2nd qtr because he disagreed with a call. When Simons was slammed to the floor & got a concussion there was NO foul called. They were out to get the Blazers from the start of the game!