Spoelstra upset more by ‘trickery’ than blown call
Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra on Tuesday took less umbrage with an apparent critical officiating mistake in Monday’s loss to the Toronto Raptors than with the “trickery” employed by players to attempting to embellish fouls.
In question was the flagrant foul called on Heat center Kelly Olynyk in a tie game in the closing minutes of the 107-103 loss, when Raptors guard Kyle Lowry went down in a heap over an apparent poke in the eye. Crew chief David Guthrie later told a pool reporter that he believed he erred in the assessment of a flagrant.
The Raptors received two free throws and the ball, scoring four points on the possession to go ahead for good.
“Your first reaction, obviously you don’t want anybody getting poked in the eye,” Spoelstra said ahead of Tuesday night’s game against the Boston Celtics at Disney World’s Wide World of Sports complex. “But we see the screen across from us, and you could see that that was just a play on the ball, a swipe toward the ball, and the contact was incidental, from our standpoint. And I didn’t understand it, in once they saw the replay how they could view it that way.
“Look, we still had opportunities, so I’m not going to pin it on that. It was really unfortunate. All of us were very confused, particularly when you can go to the replay, take a look at it, and see that it was not intentional. That doesn’t mean that there wasn’t contact there. But that, in our view, was just a clear swipe at the ball, and he just happened to miss.”
With the games at Disney being played in the absence of fans due to the new coronavirus pandemic, it allows the officiating staff to hear contact as well as view it.
But Spoelstra said embellishment should not have a place in the game.
“We don’t teach player development in that way, to be able to try to trick the officials or make sounds or jerk your head back,” he said. “You know, I’ve commented about this before, when I see player-development coaches during the offseason teaching that, not on our staff, not on other staffs, just player-development coaches, personal trainers, you see that that’s part of their development of trickery.”
Spoelstra said he does not expect a different whistle than typical when it comes to the playoffs, even in the quarantine setting.
“In the playoffs, when it really matters, those typically are not called that way,” he said, with the Heat having already clinched a berth in the postseason, which opens Aug. 17. “And it was unfortunate that that was the whistle last night. But, regardless, we had an opportunity many times, regardless of how the game was officiated.
“Even that flagrant foul, yes that was a minor turning point, four-point swing, but we still had opportunities down the stretch to figure it out and try to win it, to get the win, and we didn’t.”
The NBA on Tuesday in its Last Two Minute officiating report said neither of the Heat’s late turnovers were the result of Raptors fouls, ruling one play by Lowry to be “marginal contact” and another by Fred VanVleet to be “incidental contact.”