In a heated moment after the Pelicans’ 107-101 loss to the league-best Houston Rockets on Saturday, New Orleans head coach Alvin Gentry absolutely eviscerated the officiating crew for — in his opinion — bad foul calls down the stretch, and a lack of foul calls on star forward Anthony Davis.
Here is the first clip, in which Gentry lights into the referees. He said they are “guessing on plays” in a game with playoff implications.
“And so then it comes down to a few plays in a game, you can’t guess on plays when you got teams playing for playoff spots,” Gentry said. “You can’t guess on a foul. When a guy’s got his hands on his chest, and he’s got his hands in, and you call a three-point shot [a foul], that’s not right. That’s not correct. That’s not the way you do it. And then you give them the ball back on another play when they undercut a player, that’s not right either. That’s not correct. That’s not the way you call the game. It’s not. And then when you can get called for a technical foul for walking AWAY from a guy, then this league has really changed. I walked away from him so I wouldn’t get a technical.
“It’s not right. It’s not right. Cause you know what? We’re battling our ass off for a playoff spot, and all we want is to have the game called the right way. And I’ll take the damn fine that they’re gonna give me tomorrow. That’s fine.”
Wait, what happened?
Jrue Holiday tried a new form of defense against Harden on Saturday night where he kept one hand on his chest and another in the air. The new approach to defending one of the league’s most deceptive scorers was likely an attempt at taking the swipe-through three-point foul away. But as Harden rose up for a jump shot, he leaned slightly inward toward Holiday’s exposed hand.
It’s very hard to tell if Holiday actually touched Harden’s arm. Here are two different angles:
Had this been a blowout, or a meaningless regular season game, this foul call would have meant nothing. But this was a seven-point game that then ballooned to 10 because Gentry was assessed a technical foul shortly after.
It was also a game with serious playoff implications. The Pelicans fell to 39-30, moving below the Spurs for the eighth seed in the West. They are still a game and a half ahead of both the Clippers and the Nuggets, but every game counts, especially when the playoff race is so close.
Who’s to blame here?
Really, it’s James Harden. He and the other craftily deceptive scorers across the league put NBA officials in impossible situations. It’s hard to tell if that’s a foul, but Harden sold it like it unequivocally was one. From the official’s vantage point, it probably looked like a foul.
It’s a tough call to make in a game of this magnitude, but somebody has to make it.
Wait, what about Anthony Davis?
Here is the second clip from Gentry’s post-game tirade, where he references Davis’s lack of foul calls because “he doesn’t bitch and complain about it.”
“We try to play the right way, and we play our ass off, and what happens to us is A.D. never gets a call,” Gentry said. “He never gets a call. We talk about them holding him. We talk about them grabbing him on rolls. We talk about them coming under him on post-ups. He never gets a call, not one. And you know why? Because he doesn’t bitch and complain about it. He just keeps playing the game.
Davis finished with 26 points on 11-of-18 shooting but only shot four free throws all game. All four of those attempts came in the first four minutes of the first quarter. He averages fewer than eight free throw attempts per game on the season and has only averaged more than eight free throws a game once in his six seasons in the league.
We don’t know for certain if Holiday actually touched Harden on that layups, but it sure was enough probable cause to give the play a second look. The way the West is panning out, if the playoffs started today, we’d get a seven-game series betweens these two teams.
Let’s get it, Houston.
Read Again https://www.sbnation.com/2018/3/18/17135302/alvin-gentry-referee-officiating-rant-james-harden-jrue-holiday-anthony-savisBagikan Berita Ini
0 Response to "Alvin Gentry eviscerates referees after Pelicans suffer loss to Houston"
Post a Comment