Devin Booker and Dillon Brooks were not happy with the officiating during the Phoenix Suns’ 120-107 loss to the Oklahoma City Thunder in Game 2 of their Western Conference playoff series on Wednesday night. <\/p>\n
Asked specifically about a technical foul he received in the third quarter (starts at 28:13 mark), Booker said it “feels disrespectful”and “bad for the integrity of the sport” when the officials aren’t held accountable for what he felt was an unjust call.<\/p>\n
The source of Brooks’ ire was Shai Gilgeous-Alexander getting to the free throw nine times and his general penchant for getting calls that go in his favor, telling reporters that the officials need to be more judicious with how they blow the whistle:<\/p>\n
“[Gilgeous-Alexander is] a little frail, and that’s what the refs are going to call. I got to be smarter about it, but this is the playoffs. It’s a man’s game. Like, I used to watch this back when Michael Jordan was playing or whoever else, when\u00a0LeBron\u00a0was younger. This is physical basketball. I don’t get why all the dropping and the falling and the flopping and the flailing and all this stuff is allowed when we get to the playoffs. Leave that for the [regular] season for the fans. This is about who’s the better team, who’s a more with-it team. Don’t decide the games on no free throws.”<\/p>\n
Booker’s technical foul was confusing to everyone. Even the ESPN broadcast questioned how the call was warranted because it came after he was trying to save a ball from going out of bounds. <\/p>\n
There was nothing obvious that stood out about the play. Booker’s elbow did make contact with Jaylin Williams’ chest, but he wasn’t able to extend his arm or anything to push him away. <\/p>\n
The disparity on foul calls and free throws wasn’t significant in the game. Phoenix was whistled for four more fouls (25 to 21), while Oklahoma City took three more free throws (25 to 22). <\/p>\n
Oklahoma City was up 93-75 at the time the technical foul was called, so it’s hard to say it made a huge difference in the outcome. But there is a very real question about how that specific play warranted the punishment it received. <\/p>\n
There was no pool report after the game, so the officials did not publicly address their thought process. <\/p>\n
The bigger issue for the Suns is they face a 2-0 hole in the series as it heads to Phoenix for the next two games. Game 3 will be played on Saturday at 3:30 p.m. ET. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Devin Booker and Dillon Brooks were not happy with the officiating during the Phoenix Suns’ 120-107 loss to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":716522,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[7,6,11],"class_list":{"0":"post-716521","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba-playoffs","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-nba","10":"tag-nba-playoffs"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116453855930024911","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716521","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=716521"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/716521\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/716522"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=716521"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=716521"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=716521"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}