I believe he did more than just "secure possession" and shoot. To my eye, he made a 'slight' move in the air with the ball...beyond just "securing it"
Yeah, maybe. I mean, I watched it a ton of times trying to convince myself that Lee held on too long, but I really just ended up convincing myself that he probably shot it as quickly as possible. If the NBA defines 0.3 seconds as "possible" and Lee shot as quickly as possible, and even the Kings argue it took under 0.4 seconds...I just can't see the protest being upheld on the timing of Lee's catch and shoot. If that was all we had going for us, I would be very pessimistic (like under 5% that we could get it overturned).
The key here is the Ryan Hollins tip. Hollins knows he tipped it, we know he tipped it, the NBA knows he tipped it, and there's pretty much indisputable evidence that he tipped it. In this situation a tip means by rule the clock starts and by rule we win.
The real question is how the NBA is going to deal with this considering the major social media push which is allowing the general public to see that Hollins did in fact tip the ball. They don't have too many options on what to do, so let's run through them.
1) Deny the protest without explanation. This will not look good. Closing your eyes and looking the other way is not going to win any points.
2) Deny the protest by claiming that the evidence is inconclusive. Given that some of the evidence looks very conclusive, this is also a bad play.
3) Deny the protest by admitting that Hollins tipped the ball, but saying that the officials did not have access to conclusive evidence at the time.
4) Uphold the protest and overturn the game result.
Options 1 and 2 are just not going to fly. While Memphis fans would be happy, general NBA fans (and especially Sacramento fans) would cry foul. Option 4, on the other hand, would make Sacramento fans happy, Memphis fans upset, but would generally sit well with the remainder of the NBA fanbase. However, the NBA would have to admit a mistake and change a game result, which they are certainly not inclined to do.
That leaves option 3. Memphis is happy. General NBA fans can probably swallow it without much complaint because it doesn't concern them. The only concern is addressing this Sacramento objection: What is the point of allowing a protest, if you admit the wrong call was made but you don't do anything about it? In essence, they would have to rule that Sacramento's protest was not allowed under protest rules - for instance they could say that protests are allowed for issues of rule interpretation but not instances of referee error. Certainly the NBA would NEVER allow a protest on a foul call (or non-call) that decided a game.
So this is what I think will probably happen. The NBA will decline the protest and release a statement that is basically the following: "The end of the Sacramento/Memphis game involved a judgment call by the officials. The officials used the replay system and all of the evidence available to them before carefully rendering a decision. They decided that the evidence was inconclusive. After the game was over, attention was brought to evidence that suggests strongly that the officials' call was incorrect. However, this evidence was not available to the officials at the time. Unfortunately, NBA rules do not allow protests to be filed on the basis of judgment calls, so the Sacramento protest is invalid and the game result is unchanged."
That's what I think is going to happen. I suppose that there's a chance (maybe 25% at best) that the NBA will overturn the call, but most likely they say "can't protest a judgment call" and move on.