As playoffs heat up, officiating complaints overshadow action
The surest sign that the NBA playoffs are in full swing: Complaints about the referees have reached a fever pitch.
In Memphis last week, an apoplectic Draymond Green skipped off the court after being ejected for a flagrant foul. In Milwaukee on Saturday, Bucks Coach Mike Budenholzer had to be restrained by his players as he protested a no-call, while Celtics Coach Ime Udoka lashed out at the referees in his postgame news conference.
In Dallas on Sunday, Luka Doncic could only laugh and bite his tongue when he received a technical foul less than three minutes into the Mavericks’ Game 4 victory over the Phoenix Suns. In that same game, Devin Booker looked around in disbelief after receiving a technical foul for contacting an opponent’s head while following through on his jump shot. Chris Paul, meanwhile, said that the loss felt “like a blur” because he was called for six fouls in just 23 minutes, easily the fastest foul-out of his 17-year career.
“I’ve been in 500 basketball games, something like that, and I haven’t quite seen one like today,” Booker said, adding that he was choosing his words carefully so that he wouldn’t be fined by the NBA league office for criticizing the officials. “It was tough. It was a different type game. Different energy. Starting off the game with foul trouble and techs for no reason.”
Asked if he had ever seen someone receive a technical foul while shooting a jumper, Booker replied: “I have not. That’s a good question. Have you?”
Weird and sometimes inexplicable calls garner extra attention in the playoffs, where the high-pressure atmosphere, rowdy crowds, and physical play combine with advanced gamesmanship and constant lobbying by players to make life difficult for the referees.
Last offseason, the NBA instituted new rule interpretations designed to crack down on “non-basketball moves,” which included “abrupt, overt and abnormal” movement by an offensive player designed to bait referees. Though the popular new framework led to a sharp reduction in fouls and free throw attempts during the opening months of the regular season, the numbers normalized by season’s end. The average NBA team was called for 19.6 fouls and given 21.9 free throw attempts per game this season, nearly identical to the previous year’s marks of 19.3 fouls and 21.8 free throw attempts per game. Both figures tend to increase in the playoffs, and this year is no exception: The average team has been called for 22.4 fouls - the most since 2010 - and attempted 23.5 free throws per game through Sunday.
Fouls are up, and so is the workload for the NBA’s disciplinarians. Suns Coach Monty Williams, Memphis Grizzlies Coach Taylor Jenkins and Philadelphia 76ers center Joel Embiid have all been fined for criticizing the officials, while Green, Miami Heat forward Jimmy Butler and Denver Nuggets center DeMarcus Cousins have all drawn fines for a range of offenses, including making obscene gestures and kicking towels into the stands.
The complaints have started to snowball and occasionally overshadow the gameplay. Take the ongoing second-round series between the Grizzlies and Golden State Warriors, which saw Green’s ejection from Game 1, Dillon Brooks’s ejection in Game 2 and Ja Morant’s unfortunate knee injury in Game 3. Warriors Coach Steve Kerr loudly decried Brooks’s foul by saying he had “broken the code” by injuring Gary Payton II, and the Grizzlies guard was suspended for Game 3.
A few days later, Jenkins made a point to argue that Warriors guard Jordan Poole had “yanked” Morant’s knee and “caused” his injury. In a since-deleted tweet, Morant claimed that Poole had also “broken the code,” but Memphis’s public pleas and petitioning of the league office to review the play were unsuccessful.
Milwaukee’s last-second Game 3 victory over Boston produced a similar sideshow. On the final possession, Marcus Smart was
fouled by Jrue Holiday as he prepared to shoot a potential game-tying three-pointer. Smart felt that he deserved three free throws because he was in the act of shooting, but the referees awarded only two. A league office review deemed that to be the correct call, noting that the contact occurred before Smart “brought the ball upward toward the basket.”
“[The referees] didn’t give me any explanation,” Smart said during his postgame comments. “When I went to ask, they looked at me funny.”
Udoka termed that decision a “bad missed call,” but the first-year coach was also upset that the officials didn’t assess offensive fouls on late-game drives by Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo. Like Smart, he didn’t get the answers that he wanted.
“[The referees’] explanation is if [the defenders] don’t fall down, they don’t call it,” he said. “I’ve got to teach my guys to flop a little more.”