In the NBA Finals, rules aren’t always the rules

Steve Javie hasn’t scored a point or whistled a call in these playoffs, but enough people were talking about him during Game 2 of the NBA Finals that you would think he had led the Golden State Warriors to a blowout win, writes Candace Buckner of The Washington Post.

Poor Javie. All he did was show up to work Sunday night, in that darkened room with all the monitors and replay gizmos that help officials make the right calls while dragging out the game. He was in front of a camera so ABC could beam him into homes and onto screens across the world — and so NBA fans everywhere could channel their anger toward him, the retired official in a suit and tie who told the truth.

Upholding the rules in an NBA Finals game is optional. We’ve known this. We’ve all seen it. When the stakes are raised and the games matter more, some players get a longer leash, the benefit of the doubt. And officials show unmerited grace when instead they should be judging the action based purely on what it deserves.

Now we’ve come face-to-face with this reality in the NBA’s premier event featuring the Warriors and the Boston Celtics. Javie said it out loud when he explained why the Warriors’ Draymond Green could essentially play Twister on top of Jaylen Brown’s head, shove him in the back, tug on his shorts, then start talking smack — and still not get called for a technical foul.

See, Green already had one tech. Earlier, he had repeatedly extended his right forearm into another Celtics player, Grant Williams ,to the point where the official must have thought: “Sigh. I guess after this third time, I better blow my whistle before Dray breaks out ‘The People’s Elbow.’ ” Green threw up his hands — Who, me?! — when the whistle finally came, because how dare the ref punish him for trying to tattoo Williams’s sternum?

But back to the dust-up with Brown. Neither player got hit with a technical — Brown had the unmitigated gall to stand up, a move that clearly provoked Green further — and before the officiating crew made the call, ABC turned to Javie Time. As an analyst, Javie confirmed what we’ve all known: During the Finals, for better or worse, basketball’s written rules do not apply.

“You have to consider one player has a technical foul. Is this enough to call a double ‘T’ and eject the one player?” Javie said. “Personally, I would say nothing and I would let it defuse as that.”

Green remained in the game, where his force on both ends of the court factored into the Warriors’ 107-88 win. He stuck around long enough in this so-called basketball game to lower his head like an all-pro fullback and clear out Williams so Stephen Curry could swish a three.