A nice overall game flow is not what fans saw when the Lakers played the Blazers on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
The whistle was active and erratic during the opening quarter. Portland was awarded a whopping 22 free throws, which was the most in any quarter for any team this year. To contextualize that even further, the Blazers average 27 free throws per game. The Lakers only took three free throws in the opening quarter and ended the night with 21. The Blazers shot more free throws in one quarter than the Lakers did all game<\/p>\n
However, just because the way a game was called didn\u2019t affect the result doesn\u2019t mean the decisions were right, or consistently ruled the same way.<\/p>\n
This officiating conversation was part of the dialogue postgame, with Lakers head coach JJ Redick revealing that the referees acknowledged their inconsistency.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s always going to be fouls,\u201d Redick said. \u201cYou can sit there and go through and watch every single [foul]. I do it sometimes. I\u2019ll watch film and I\u2019ll watch a play and \u2018Wait a minute. Let me rewind that, zoom in, slow it down.\u2019 The officials dont have that luxury. It\u2019s more about the way the game is called. They got off to a bad start tonight and they admitted that to me.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then they were all over the map. Making calls and not actually making a call. That happened multiple times where we have to go over, \u2018What\u2019s going on? What\u2019s the actual call here?\u2019 I couldn\u2019t get great communication from Pat [Frasher] all night, which we\u2019ll put in the feedback. I\u2019ve talked about it. It\u2019s not to single them out or it\u2019s not the reason we lost. For whatever reason, you\u2019d have to ask probably the other 29 coaches, it feels like the inconsistency night to night within a game has been there for most of these crews.\u201d<\/p>\n
This isn\u2019t the first time Redick has shown frustration with the officials.<\/p>\n
At least in the Blazers game, the officials acknowledged the bad start, even if Redick was displeased with the communication he got from crew chief Pat Fraser.<\/p>\n
Another odd call later in this game was the flagrant foul on LeBron James.<\/p>\n
He went up to attempt a block a shot by Donovan Clingan and the play was deemed a flagrant 1 foul. That seems like an odd call given the replay. If what LeBron did is the standard criteria for a flagrant call, then no player can ever contest a shot in the air without it being deemed a flagrant.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s hard for Redick and the Lakers to adjust to the officiating if what\u2019s a foul and what isn\u2019t is changing game to game and even play-by-play.<\/p>\n
Given that this has been a theme for Redick and the Lakers, they\u2019ll have to keep bringing it up and try to better understand what\u2019s allowed throughout the year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A nice overall game flow is not what fans saw when the Lakers played the Blazers on Saturday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3724],"tags":[7,771],"class_list":{"0":"post-547319","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-lakers-news"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547319","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}