Streak ends on technicality
Actually, it was a technical, well, a few, and an ejection, well, also a few, in last minute of rare loss
It was a shame, really, that an afternoon of delightful basketball with two very good teams going at it with playoff intensity and energy had to end with such rancour and disgust.
But officiating has been an issue in the NBA since forever, and never more than this season. The calls vs. non-calls were once again game-changing.
Video evidence would suggest the Toronto Raptors’ DeMar DeRozan was fouled on a layup in the final 30 seconds of a two-point game and that missed call ultimately led to an ending full of ejections, anger and disappointment.
“He smacked the s—- out of me,” De- Mar DeRozan said of Oklahoma City’s Corey Brewer. “He smacked me. He tried to smack me because I had a layup. Period. I got fouled.”
When referee Marc Davis did not make a call, it started a brutal end to a great game the Thunder won 132-125 to snap Toronto’s 11-game winning streak.
DeRozan was hit with a technical foul after the next possession, with 11.1 seconds left, and got a second one three seconds to go that got him tossed.
Serge Ibaka carried on harshly enough to get two technicals and his own ejection before coach Dwane Casey got tossed for something either he or fan seated near him said. It was frustration run amok. "It was obvious,” DeRozan said of the bubbling-over anger. “You’ve seen it from all of us, the frustration, what it came down to.
“It was obvious, especially at the end of the game.”
Casey, however, wasn’t going to leave himself open to any supplemental financial disci- pline from the league,. He was seething, make no mistake about it, but ranting wouldn’t have changed a thing.
“We’re going to complain the proper way how the game got out of hand at the end,” he said. “We just watched the calls, we’re going to do it the right way.
“Officials are going to miss calls but … at the juncture of the game when some of the calls were made? We’ve got to get it right around the league. Not just this game, the entire league.”
Casey did speak to an overriding issue: composure. Even af- ter the DeRozan non-call and a subsequent Thunder basket, the Raptors were in a fourpoint game. It would have taken a miracle, but a miracle was impossible with DeRozan and Ibaka tossed and Kyle Lowry on the bench having fouled out.
“It was a four-point game, we got frustrated, we can’t allow that to do that to us,” Casey said.
They can, perhaps, use it for more fuel?
“We’re used to going against the odds every step of the way,” DeRozan said. “It’s been like that. We fight through it, but as soon as we say something, we’re the bad guys, we get fined, we get criticized. Every single night when we play, we fight against all the odds. We still prevail, but we’ve all got a breaking point and it’s frustrating. You seen it tonight.”
The brouhaha about the final 30 seconds took away from what was one of the best games played in the Air Canada Centre this season.
It was physical and intense and played at a crazy level of speed all afternoon.
Russell Westbrook had tripledouble with 37 points, 14 assists and13 rebounds, breaking a125125 tie with two huge baskets in the final minute.
DeRozan had 24 points for Toronto and Lowry had 22 points and 10 assists before he fouled out, a crippling blow since the Raptors were without Fred VanVleet, who sat out with a bruised right hand.
But it was a fun game, a tough game, a game the Raptors needed with the playoffs about a month away.
“This is the intensity that the playoffs are going to be,” Casey said. “We’ve got to make sure we keep our composure. It’s one game, it doesn’t make or break our season. We knew we (weren’t) going to run the table the rest of the season.”